


The Coming of the Storm

by silusaugustus



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Betrayal, Caesar's Legion, Espionage, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Femme Fatale, Multi, Oral Sex, Threesome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-24
Updated: 2014-09-13
Packaged: 2018-02-10 05:12:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 29
Words: 35,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2012220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silusaugustus/pseuds/silusaugustus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Many years before the Legion descended upon the Dam, they expanded their territory into the Colorado, founding what Caesar hoped would be a thriving town, built entirely upon the ideals and teachings of the Legion and Caesar himself.  The story focuses on Silus, at this time a Decanus, and his struggle with an undercover tribe bent on freeing the Legion of its slaves.  </p><p>Cameos will be made, including Joshua Graham, Vulpes Inculta, the Courier from my 200 chapter Fallout fic (available to read on deviantArt) Nevaeh Kennedy (the amazing and wonderful Courier of a close friend) and other characters I deem fit.  Just a disclaimer, this story is mostly fluff and smut angst and might not meet the criteria for a good steady fanfiction.  It's simply for fun and I'm not taking it too seriously.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The travel, had, as usual, been draining for the large encampment.  Silus’ century, where he currently served as a Decanus, had been ordered to help set up the new large establishment in Colorado.  It was cooler here, farther north than Arizona, where he’d spent most of his time training and overtaking the area’s tribes.  Nuclear weather gave the Colorado wastes eerie rain and snow, with the occasional radiation storm.  It was a hostile place.

 

They crossed up into Colorado several days ago, to a basin area the Legate had called “free from disease.’  Supposedly the air here was clean, the radiation not seeping through the protective shelf of the Rockies.  The nearest city was hundreds of miles away, but small tribes littered the area to make use of its hospitable wilderness. Meadows with flowers.  Even with the scattered snowstorm, it seemed like a slice of paradise.  Their mission was a hefty one, a decision Caesar and Graham spent many hours working on in the secrecy of their large red tent.

 

To build a city.  Training grounds.  Caesar called it, “New Milan.”  It would be a place of trade and commerce, enticing for the larger cities who housed nomads traveling into The Utah.  He would set up Legionary homes, a temple for the Priestesses to teach young men Latin and the history of the Legion.  Slaves would be transported here from their collection pens scattered across Arizona--only the heartiest and strongest of slaves would survive the difficult journey, and this was wise Caesar said, as healthy slaves led to healthy work.  In the city, the slaves would not only build most of the town, dig the irrigation ditches, plant crops, and set up Legion-style plumbing, but they would also forge weapons to be sent to the Legion in all its growing areas.  

 

Silus didn’t share the hopefulness of the younger recruits.  They had been brainwashed since birth, the babies of the Legion who believed this bullshit about Caesar being a god.  Older Legionaries, including Silus’s Centurion Gallus, shook their head at the indoctrination but said little.  If Caesar wanted to build an empire on worshipping himself as a god, so be it.  Whatever caused the soldiers to perform better.  But most of these men, including Silus, remembered when the Legion was small and humble.  These past few years their numbers had exploded and this notion of worship and mythology came about.   Naysayers were killed, usually by the Legate, who blinked his steely blue eyes less often than he pulled his trigger.  

 

But Silus was one of few who had risen to Decanus without being preached to.  His Centurion remained tight-lipped when it came to building this town.  Some thought it was a great port of entry, a way to conquer more lands and people, but the bloodier men in the Legion thought it was a waste of time.  His fellow Decanii were cheerful--who didn’t want to see green grass and snow-capped mountains after sweating for months at a time on some sizzling Mojave rock in Arizona?  But Silus’s indignation had little to do with location and more to do with being so far away from the Legion’s strongholds.  To expand and grow, many men had to be sent far out into the places the Legion didn’t reach.  But Silus preferred to be near Caesar.  The man was intelligent, charming, fair in the same way the wastes were fair.  He was a father figure.  And Silus desperately wanted to reach the rank of Praetorian in the future.  He didn’t want to be out in the forests and meadows building houses like a nanny prospector.  He wanted to fight for his Leader.  Out here the men were led not by Caesar, but by Graham, who shared none of his leader’s characteristics and was feared by everyone, even the most stoic of Centurions.  

 

But, now they were here, one of many centuries who had been ordered to report with a new group of slaves to add to the work force.  Several captures had been taken by the Frumentarii specifically for their abilities to build and irrigate, and these men and women were under constant surveillance, forced to show the men where and how to erect buildings.  The perimeter of the area had already been cleared, leaving large muddy holes where the roads and smithy shops would go.  Silus and his men were to be stationed in familiar rows of red tents overlooking the valley, and duties would include everything from guarding the perimeter to going on scouting missions and helping overtake local tribes.  

 

His first day consisted of listening to several briefings on the importance of keeping the captures designated as architects, isolated and focused on their tasks.  They tromped through the mud of the construction to visit the enormous slave pens, built recently and still smelling of cut wood.  The pens were huge, Silus marveled as he strode by, and in far better condition than the large pits in Arizona which filled with dust and grime.  Here the barefoot slaves walked on lush grass.  The sun was farther away, not beating down and causing them to faint from heat exhaustion.  And these were the healthiest of slaves, despite their exhaustion on crossing the radiation-steeped barrier at the border of Colorado.  After they left the pen area, where Legion dogs patrolled looking rather hungrily at those inside the pens, it was up to the Legion quarters on the hill.

 

Decanii sometimes shared tents, but here Silus saw that he would have his own; a modest 7x7 foot crimson cover and inside a standard foraged mattress on a slave-made bedframe.  Rain was so common here that mattresses on the ground were not an option.  An odd change from the desert..  When the Legion carriages of supplies, pulled by Brahmin, made it up the mesa he would have the privilege of selecting a few personal items.  A lantern, maybe some fruit.  He gazed around the space, pleased that he wouldn’t be bunking with his fellow snoring, farting, raping Legionaries.  It was very difficult to enjoy sleep after a long, hard day when someone dragged in a slave and began ordering her to service him.  Loudly.  

 

After unholstering his gun and placing it on the mattress, keeping his machete at his side, Silus exited the tent, his feathered helmet brushing against the fabric as he ducked.  It was already raining, thunder rumbling in the distance, and so he pulled his black goggles over his eyes, but kept his face mask pulled down below his chin.  He wanted to smell the area.  So different than the dusty desert.  He looked northeast.  It made him uneasy that Kansas, his homeland, was so close.  Maybe four days’ journey.  But it had been years since he made that trip.  He headed through the field of red tents, passing several larger, more decorated, Centurion tents, the lavish Priestess tent, the medical tent, and the smithy tent before entering the slave-ran cafeteria.  Rows of picnic tables, brought from Arizona ahead of his century and already assembled, allowed Legionaries to eat at leisure.  Sometimes, at smaller camps, the Veteran Decani and their Centurions would smuggle in treats, or small flasks of alcohol, but with the Legate overseeing this project the idea was balked at.  

 

It would be, for several months, a place of purity and building.  Graham at one time had been a New Canaanite and a Mormon, both tribes known for their hardworking settlement skills.  Bred from hardy pioneers, the Mormons were perhaps the best people to have around when erecting an ambitious project.  But Graham was also murderous, unstable, and bloodthirsty.  So, not exactly the most patient or communicative architect.  Still, the attitude here was light, hopeful.  New.  Recruits outnumbered officers ten to one, and most of them were young hardy men already indoctrinated.  The Legate breathing down their neck didn’t seem to affect them here in the Colorado’s slice of paradise.  They laughed and joked in the cafeteria, Silus rather sullenly chewing his steak and not participating.  

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Legate Graham sets a Legionary straight.

The rain had picked up when he left the food tent and headed toward the approaching Brahmin carts, full of supplies. Many Decanii would have sneered at the idea of stepping up to help unload the crates with the recruits, but Silus didn’t mind. He was eager to have something to do, and to forage for the best supplies for his meager tent--to a Legionary, still a privilege. So he pulled up his facemask and worked through the storm, tossing crates of food, dishes, tools, weapons, and all manner of necessities to the other Legionaries and their slave bands. Meanwhile he emptied a crate and set it aside for himself; by the end of the carts he had filled it with personal items. 

Silus was happy to not pass off the crate to a slave, but kept it in his large sinewy arms as he leapt off the back of the wagon and once again headed toward his tent. Sunset was likely soon; he couldn’t tell through the thick stormclouds of grey that hovered around the large valley. In either case, his work was done for the day until Gallus called tomorrow’s morning training. 

The Decanus passed unhindered through the rows of tents without incident, until he turned the corner for his own contubernium, the larger tent intended for eight men; his recruits. A large gathering of men, not only his but other from his century, were apparently continuing the jovial mood, their dangerous trek over, by forcing the slave girls to dance. Though his eyes were masked by the goggles, Silus tilted his head toward the small grassy knoll, where, surrounded by Legionaries, four or five girls were nude. They obliged with the requests, appeasing the wishes of the recruits. From behind the goggles he watched them sway, hips colliding, knees bending and arms snaking in their own interpretations of a slow and seductive dance. The rain caused the girls’ hair to stick to their necks and shoulders, caused goosebumps to stand out on their tender flesh. He couldn’t help but notice their erect nipples, before turning away. 

He had no use for slave girls. Silus found their simpering mundane, their fear exhausting. And these ‘events’ which always ended in sex, lots of sex, were for the recruits. Officers rarely acted so, preferring to grab one or two women and take them to their tents for services. Or else officers had the privilege of marrying, taking a wife who would cook, clean, and fuck with more enthusiasm than any frightened captured girl. 

“Ave,” he heard over the sound of the men hollering, and the thunder rumbling. Silus snapped back into reality when he saw another Decanus approach. The other had likewise removed his face mask and despite the goggles and headdress he was recognizable as another Veteran, and member of Silus’ century. 

“Ave Callum,” he responded in kind, and the other nodded at his crate. “Do you require more hands?”

“This is it,” Silus said with a shake of his head, and the other, completely unfocused on the act unfolding not thirty feet away, opened his mouth with another question. But he paused when a female shriek pierced the air, and both men turned. One of the recruits decided not to postpone his happiness any longer, and had already pulled one slave girl away from the circle of dancing, by her hair. The others looked on, too afraid to stop dancing, but lips pale with fear as the man wasted no time in bending the slave over the workbench by an officer’s tent. Another shriek fell on the misty cliffside as he raised his kilt and entered her. Silus behind his goggles had an eyebrow raised, but he and Callum both shrugged off the scene and faced one another again. Silus was silent, and awaited the other man’s question. 

“Perhaps you can tell me where---”

Another voice rose, this time not Callum’s rather brooding tone, or the cries of a capture. It was a deep, throaty, too-recognizable voice. It was shouting in Latin. “Statim cessant! Stultorum! Sordes!” Everyone froze--Silus, Callum, the Legionaries, the slaves. The young recruit balls deep in the slave even froze. No doubt most wanted to flee the scene, but fleeing the Legate was far, far worse than standing in place and taking his punishment. So for mere self-preservation they froze, but the Legionary rather feebly backed away from the naked girl. 

The Legate rounded the corner, tall, so incredibly tall and larger than life, a fire deep in his cold eyes. With one hand he picked up the woman by the arm, tossed her aside. Now he took both and uprighted the entire workbench, over 300 pounds of iron equipment on top, letting the mess scatter as he shoved forward, picking the Legionary up by his armor. At first Joshua Graham held him close. His voice lowered to a rather inhuman snarl as he continued, “You think this is your fucking playground? You think this is the place to sully the Legion, and not take your duties seriously? Do you think you deserve physical pleasure? When there’s so much work to be done?” He shook the man fiercely, bellowing, “DO YOU?” 

Silus and Callum both stared at the scene impassively. Sometimes one Legionary’s indiscretion led to everyone’s punishment. With the Legate though, sometimes he would just as soon shoot the offender and let everyone else take note and learn on their own terms. Silus noted the large fire axe on Graham’s back….perhaps that would be today’s lesson. It wasn’t unheard of, and Graham had presumably been more stressed than usual lately. 

Now he lifted the Legionary up as though he were a doll. The slave girls were huddled together rather pathetically, trying to cover their nude bodies. Joshua Graham, despite his lack of morals, had a certain disdain for public lewdness. Or fornication. As this young recruit was about to learn. Silus watched the man’s feet kick underneath him, watched him desperately claw for air while the Legate strengthened his grip. Now he spoke to all the men, who immediately turned to stand at attention, giving Graham full respect. “This place,” the Legate barked, the rain causing his own short brown hair to flatten over his forehead, “Is not your fucking ticket to freedom. You are all slaves. Every last one of you. You are trained for a purpose. Fulfill your purpose. And keep your disgusting animal displays inside your tents.” 

The Legionary was turning blue; Graham now brought his arm forward and down, lifting his knee and slamming the young man’s back against it. With a sickening crack the Legionary hit the Legate’s knee, and Graham let him sink to the ground, gasping for air and trying to cry from pain, but too winded to form noises. Silus exhaled silently, relieved--the Legate was feeling generous tonight apparently. 

The crate of belongings was heavy in Silus’s hands. He refused to move until Graham, not even aware of the two Decanii, stormed off away from the tents, his long legs carrying him far in few steps. Callum brandished a club. “That was one of my men,” he stated darkly, and nodded at Silus. “Amicus.”


	3. Chapter 3

The Legionary and his crate full of supplies turned away from the scene. It wasn’t long until he entered the dark tent, fumbled around for the crate, and found the lantern within. He lit it and found a stray piece of fabric to hang the light on in the wall of his tent. Now with the warm glow of light, he studied the empty red curtains and took off his goggles, perusing through the large wooden crate. Silus sat on his bed and happily went through his spoils of the day. 

A water pitcher and large bowl, for washing and shaving. A thick, knitted red blanket made by one of Arizona’s top slaves. He placed it lovingly on the bed beside him. Hooks for hanging his armor on the walls of the tent. Another two lanterns plus extra fuel, homemade candles. A small but invaluable pillow; he would likely be one of few in his rank to procure such a luxury. It had gotten slightly damp in the rain; Silus brushed water off it and placed it on the bed behind him. And at the bottom, his best finds of the day: three books. They were in crates for the young Legionary schoolchildren. One was an electrical book, another was a medical dictionary (used mostly for learning Latin) and one was simply a large volume of songs and poetry in the forgotten language. 

Silus came from a time when Latin was a new idea for the Legion, a way for them to communicate without being intercepted. It had been Caesar’s idea of course, but Joshua Graham’s Latin skills were far superior to even the dictator. As such most of the lessons had been, unfortunately, led by Graham. Caesar captured a rather large tribe who taught their women to be healers, skilled in the archaic language from reading their own pre-War medical texts, and these were the first Priestesses. Their jobs moved from teaching Latin to children, to being adoptive mothers in essence. Now they were indoctrinators as well. Caesar had brought his most loyal and subservient here to so-called New Milan. And their schoolbooks and religious texts followed them. 

Silus didn’t give a shit about myths, or Latin, or Rome. He just wanted to read. 

He had intentions to pass the night in solitude, reading and enjoying himself, perhaps bringing a slave to his tent. Silus turned the crate over and used it as a makeshift bedside table and removed his armor. But despite those intentions, when he lay on a real bed for the first time in months, Silus fell asleep before dusk hit. He didn’t even bother unfolding his new blanket, sprawled out on the crude bed while the rain fell outside. 

 

___________________________________________________________

 

He awoke to a meek voice: “Decanus Silus?”

Silus groggily opened one eye, staring at the dark room. Had he called for a slave? He didn’t recall. He checked the candle; it had only dripped several inches and was still burning. The book was open, flat across his chest. The slave looked expectantly at him, her back bowed in a completely submissive stance. That cowardly, slave-like way they all stood. 

“What is it?” he said aggravatedly, realizing by the still-open tent flap behind her that it was barely dark. Plenty of soldiers still milled around outside, and the rain had only eased up but not stopped. He was slowly awakening and had no memory of calling anyone to his tent. 

“You’ve been summoned, sir,” she said sheepishly, again. She passed him a small note. At first he thought it was from his Centurion, but then he noted the elaborate silver leaf and raised his eyebrow. Realizing that he was not going to grab her or else throw something at her to get out, the girl ducked again apologetically and exited the tent as he turned the sealed note over. It bore a wax Mark of Caesar, and he opened it annoyed. Who was sending him such overindulgent letters? 

The text was in Latin, perfectly spaced letters written in ink, dotting the paper like little birds against a pale red sky. He was still annoyed as he read it. 

Decanus, 

Please report to the Priestess Quarters, posthaste. Tardiness will not be appreciated.

In Caesar’s Name, Respectfully. 

 

Silus rolled his eyes. What in the actual fuck? He’d never been called into their tent. Sometimes the women liked to encourage enthusiastic warriors in, to talk of Legion exploits, to praise Caesar with fantastic war stories. But those who volunteered were the theatrical type, prone to self-serving monologues and with far better Latin skills than Silus, who only followed orders in the dead language. Priestesses did not marry, but it was not unheard of them to be ‘used’ by the highest officers: Frumentarii, Praetorians, namely. However, a Priestess had the unique ability to turn down a Legionary with no consequence; Caesar did not want the women distracted from their teaching and raising of children. Silus not only didn’t request sex with a Priestess (as if a priestess would agree to seeing a Decanus, albeit a handsome one, as Silus was) but he had special disdain for them: they perpetuated these grandiose lies and myths, and were touted as Caesar’s “most loyal” women. It was easy as fuck to be loyal when all you did was sit on your ass, nurse other people’s babies, and teach Latin and fairy tales. Silus worked his ass off to be a fighter and warrior. Even when he made Praetorian, as he fully intended to, he’d rather take a spunky slave than a bitchy snot-nosed Priestess as his wife. 

He was fully mystified, but even more annoyed than mystified. Grumpily he pulled on his boots from the bedside, but chose to leave his armor off. A one-shoulder toga should be good enough for the Priestesses. They were the ones who wanted to see him immediately. He tromped outside and into the slight rain, where a fog was beginning to descend on the camp. Most Legionaries were in their tents, but some stayed out to chat and linger, or use workbenches to prepare their weapons for training in the morning. A large open-walled canopy nearby held several chairs and a table, where three Centurions sat, mumbling over the day’s events. 

Silus passed them all, looking rather informal in his lack of armor and clunky boots.


	4. Chapter 4

Inside the tent was twice as lavish as outside. Long white and peach silken drapes hung around the quarters. The beds were large and spared no expense, covered with the same silken sheets. The stone floor was carpeted, old world tapestries and rugs squandered by the Legion and given only to the most important officers. The tent was more than just a bunker for the women; there were mirrors hung, flowers woven into the walls, lanterns brightening the expansive single room as though it was lit up by electricity. In addition to several large beds (it had never occurred to Silus that the Priestesses shared beds, but now it was obvious) there were desks, vanities. Hand-made combs and brushes, small vials of liquids and oils. In one far corner there stood a table full of fruit, and another corner an art table, complete with an easel nearby. Artwork was not something Silus had ever experienced in the Legion, but now his eyes wandered to it; a large unfinished painting of Caesar’s profile. A young handsome Caesar wearing an olive crown. On the table was a clay bust of the Legate, clad in a toga which he in real life absolutely refused to wear. 

His eyes shifted to the small girl at the entrance; no doubt some sort of apprentice, she was dressed in the same manner as the women inside the tent who milled around at their desks, by the food table, or on their beds. Long flowing hair, hair that looked feminine and washed, not ratty like the slaves’ hair. A floor-length robe--called a palla--that had been dyed with roots and herbs. She was scrubbed as clean as her hair, not a drop of dirt or mud on her face. It could have been called ethereal. Silus thought it was creepy. Did these women ever leave the fucking tent? 

The young, flush-cheeked girl stood and bowed to the Decanus. “You are?”

He brandished the now-wet note in his hand. “Decanus Silus.” 

“Yes sir,” she said, bowing again and then backing up slowly. “You were sent for. I will bring Lady Nero to you; she is currently in the nursery.” 

The preteen disappeared in a trip of her long robe, and before Silus could feel more uncomfortable, with the eyes of the Priestesses on him, from a back curtain a broad man exited. Silus was startled; this was Lucius, a Centurion, a favorite of Caesar’s. A priestess, long and lean with blond hair, was holding on his arm. Lucius was in nothing but a red toga, and now he leaned forward to kiss the woman. 

In Latin, they spoke without concern for the others in the room. “Thank you for tonight.” 

“I am happy you are on this mission, Centurion.” 

“As am I. It pains me to leave Caesar, but I have you.” 

She squeezed his hand before moving aside and allowing two slave women to pick up Lucius’s nearby armor and begin re-dressing him. The Centurion’s eyes never left the Priestess as they shared a smile. Several of the women had motioned hello to Silus, but he simply leaned up against the tent pole and frowned. Who the hell was Lady Nero? And why had he been summoned? It was a mistake, he figured, or else they wanted Silus to help with some male-only task. He wasn’t interested in being a part of Legion schooling. He’d gone through it once and wanted nothing to do with it again. 

Lucius was now exiting, putting on his impressive Centurion helmet and stroking the cheek of the Priestess one last time before walking toward the door. It was eerie to see Lucius so...smarmy and mopey. Silus had watched him behead men with pride and zeal. Now he was stroking the cheek of a powdered woman. It was very strange. He noticed the young Decanus, whose hair was still wet from the rain outside, and Lucius smiled a choppy “Ave” as he passed. Silus tilted his head and returned the exchange, afterward looking uneasily around as finally the young apprentice reappeared through a curtain and behind her came the source of Silus’ annoyance. 

It was a Priestess of course. Her auburn hair was in a wrap behind her head, cascading into a ponytail over one shoulder. Her toga like the others was made of fine silk and on her arms were two thin circlets of gold. The clasps for her dress were embossed with the seal of Caesar, his profile image on one arm and Graham, Caesar, and Calhoun on the other. Her face was pale and a dainty flush rose on her cheeks as she caught sight of the misplaced Legionary, and her rose lips curled upward into an almost knowing smile. Her eyes were large, blue, so fresh and misty it seemed as though she’d stepped forward in time from the pre-War days. 

Most of the women stopped talking amongst themselves when she strode forward. Some were smiling, others listening curiously. “Decanus….Silus Augustus, is it?” she asked expectantly. Her voice betrayed her dainty looks and he heard, through her self-assured tone, that she was not a delicate flower petal. The voice belonged to someone who would wield a holorifle or a machete, not someone whose creamy arms now crossed as she folded them across her chest. 

“It is,” he said thickly, noticing for the first time that the room was full of incense and perfume, and the sickening sweet smells nauseated him.   
“I appreciate your….hasty arrival,” she said with another smirk, her blue eyes trailing his bare shoulder, down to his knees and muddy boots. He shifted uncomfortably, almost wishing that the Legate was around to smash someone else’s head into the ground and take the focus off him. “Do you know,” and now she swished, like the silk she wore, placing those hands on her hips, “Why I have summoned you here?”

“No,” he said aggravatedly, his dark brow already lowering. Several women giggled at his abrupt tone. No doubt Legionaries acted sweet as Sugar Bombs while in this creepy ode to the vagina, but Silus was far too nauseated by the scent of cherries and applewood and sage to attempt civility. He barely did it for his Centurion, let alone a gaggle of women. 

“I watched you today,” she said in that same authoritative tone. “I watched you work amongst the other Legionaries and unload our crates...one of which was sent to us from Lord Caesar himself….a very special gift which contained books.” 

His glare didn’t change. He tried to avoid her gaze, but she was staring even more pointedly. 

“Books which I watched you pluck up, several of them, and remove from our gift crate. I also watched you walk away toward your tent with that crate.” Now she changed, the rose lips moving toward a pout, the gentle auburn eyebrows folding inward as though she were sad or confused. “Lord Augustus...those books are for teaching our children. They were procured from some of Arizona’s most valueable libraries and restored, painstakingly, for us. May I ask….what is a fully grown Legionary doing with schoolbooks in his tent?”

Now the giggles grew and bubbled up all along the darkened tent, and Silus exhaled loudly. He was happy to know what this was finally about, and yet somehow still annoyed. She stared so deeply, so intently. She seemed to know him. Finally, after another unsuccessful attempt to allow his eyes to wander, he crossed his own arms and snapped, “Reading.” 

At this a few of the women outright laughed and clapped. Perhaps they too were tired of simpering Legionaries such as Lucius. Silus allowed his glare to slip past the redhead in front of him and toward the crowd, who returned his stare unabashedly. So at least they were different from slaves in one way. Just as he huffed and opened his mouth to speak again, she smoothly coaxed, “I do admire a man who cares about his studies, especially when the books are in the tongue his Lord Caesar has commanded us learn...but I must insist those texts be returned. We are short on literary material, especially Latin texts.” 

“Fine,” he chuffed, and began backing away from the levels of creepy all staring at him expectantly. To his surprise, she held out one pale arm. He looked at it as though it were a chainsaw arm, something completely alien and foreign to the Legionary. The girl’s extremely thick lashes batted once. 

“I’m certain you would not mind escorting me to your quarters. I am capable of retrieving the books myself.” 

His look was still one of incredulity and annoyance, but his thought was, “Then why the fuck not just come get it on your own?” but he said nothing, and instead nodded numbly. In seconds she had slipped her pretty little arm into the crook of his elbow. “I am Aella,” she offered, and gathered the bottom of her skirts. “I’m pleased for your help.” 

Now the women were abuzz with whispers and laughter, and many returned to their own affairs, satisfied with the humorous exchange. Silus backed out of the stinking, shimmering room, still in a daze.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some graphic/smut warning.

It was now legitimately dark outside when they exited, Silus leading the woman on his arm down the stone steps and toward the faraway row of officer tents. They passed several gathering places on the way, but no one paused to look at them. Graham’s severe outburst had dulled the jovial mood, and rain still threatened. The woman was wearing sandals that squished into the soft grass, and he paused to glance down at her skirts. Despite her best effort, the silk was wet at the hem. 

In a forced voice he quipped, “Your dress is wet.”

“I am not afraid of the elements,” she said almost cryptically. 

Speaking what he had only thought to himself earlier he boldly stated, “Then why didn’t you come to my tent yourself?”

She said nothing, her airy smile far more foreboding and creepy than the tent he’d just left. Silus curled his lip in displeasure and the rest of the walk was met with more silence. When they reached his tent he unceremoniously dropped his arm and entered, not holding the flap open for her. This seemed to amuse her and she laughed, throwing her head back and opening the flap herself. Silus kept his back to her, and rather aggravatedly picked up the books, slamming the one on the bed shut and stacking them all together. When he turned to thrust them into her hands, he stopped short when she pulled her ponytail out, shaking a long red mane full of waves and sighing. Her posture seemed different; less stiff, less graceful and flowy. She smirked at Silus and knocked the books away. 

“I came here to talk,” she stated abruptly, and now all signs he’d had of being annoyed vanished. He stood in shock, glancing from her to the downed books. As she sat and relaxed on the bed, he hesitantly reached down and picked up the books, cleaning them off and placing them on the nightstand. 

“You don’t know who I am, do you?” she said, and now Silus, intrigued, sat gingerly on the edge of the bed. His posture was now stiff and uncertain, as she reclined, cat-like. When he shook his head timidly she moved forward, her hands propping her up as she snaked forward and brought herself closer to him, propped up on her arms like some mermaid out of water. “Take a closer look….Sylvan.” 

At the name he shuddered, then glanced around him in fear. He already had problems with being so close to Kansas..his home tribe, his old name. Despite the chill air, he was sweating. Her smile widened. Now she boldly took a lock of his hair in her porcelain fingers, twirling it around absent-mindedly. “It used to be so long, so, romantic,” she sighed, and moved impossibly closer, scooting her butt along the bed until she was nearly in his lap. 

His hair hadn’t been long since he was a boy. Since his tribe had gone under the streets to escape the tornado, and left him alone on the surface, where he was later captured by Caesar himself. Graham had been frustrated at the lack of masculinity the eleven-year-old had: long flowing tunic, no shirt, hair to his waist. “He looks like a girl,” the Legate had snapped, and then beckoned for a slave. “Cut the locks. Find him appropriate clothing.” Ever the modest, conservative mass murderer that Graham was. 

Silus snapped back into the present. Her raised brow was now cynical, as she dropped her hand from his bangs. “You really don’t remember? Has the Legion wiped your brain so thoroughly?”

He could only shake his head feebly again, hoping that this wasn’t some test or trick. Backstabbing wasn’t the Legate’s style and even if Caesar wanted to weed out unloyal Legionaries, he wouldn’t use women to do it. He would use his Frumentarians. Silus swallowed the lump in his throat, unable to respond either way, and now she clarified. 

“Your tribe? The child engagements? You were royalty, Sylvan. You were, by those small-tribal-standards...a prince. You had arranged marriages just like every other sibling you had. And yours was special...a girl from a neighboring tribe.” Her little hand patted her chest as she indignantly stated, “A more powerful tribe, who wanted to integrate, to help out your miniature wish of a dynasty.” 

And suddenly he did remember; the ceremonies, the meetings, the travel. Children in his family were swapped like Brahmin between the other tribes; this was common in Kansas and the way communities were built. The youngster hadn’t minded the negotiations, figured he would worry about it as an adult and that in any case, it was beneficial for his family. His own mother simpered after his chosen bride, not caring about the high class and powerful stance of this other village...she thought the little girl was pretty, intelligent, and full of mischief. It would be a delightful match for the serious, sullen, over-contemplative Sylvan, her treasured son. His father was far more practical and only cared about the politics of the match. And Sylvan for his part had only met the girl once. A rather haughty and secretive thing who carried around a toy cat and only wanted to chase birds through the plains. 

Now he recognized her face. Less round and childlike, but with the same dark blue eyes and the same uncannily, almost inhumanly pale skin. Her lashes folded back and widened her eyes even further, by all means a woman of beauty. When the fog of realization hit Silus, it obviously showed on his face, because the girl smiled a wide, toothy grin, and without further ado leaned in and kissed him deeply.

The young Decanus had never been subjected to any form of female superiority or authority in his adult life. His sexual escapades were similar to most Legionaries: pick a slave, get fed dinner, tell her what to do and with how much enthusiasm to do it. He’d tried unsuccessfully to find women with more spunk, with more verve, but the seasoned slaves were too jaded to fan his flames and the new ones were simply timid and terrified and cried a lot. Handjobs, incidentally, were not pleasurable when the girl was crying. 

He was thrown off by the kiss not only because it wasn’t from a crying slave, but also because in Silus’s mind, he remembered the same stuffy redheaded child he’d briskly met decades before in some asinine tribal meet. She was in his mind still that child, disconnected from the admittedly luscious-looking, somehow-still-innocent young woman who currently had her lips locked with his. He held his breath, unsure how to proceed, despite the dizzying feeling of release that came from physical sensation. Silus was rather relieved when she broke the kiss and pulled away.

“Surely you don’t intend to….” he faltered.

“To what? Consider us betrothed?” she tossed her waves back and laughed, and now his comfortable sneer found its way onto his face. 

“Exactly. What do you want?”

“Now, that’s an interesting question, Siilluss.” She said the Legion name in a mocking way, as though it were something worthy of teasing about. “That’s what I wanted to talk about.” She folded her legs up underneath her, running a hand through his thick black hair as he stared skeptically at her.   
“I want…..to take back the throne the Legion took from me. That wasn’t always what I wanted. It used to be something much more modest. Something…..” she shrugged. “Something like saving the world, bettering the future. You know the type of young dreams that carry us all away.” 

Actually, he didn’t know. Silus blinked expectantly, still unsure if this was some strange spy trap one of the Frumentarius had put in place. 

“Let me tell you something about my settlement that you didn’t know. We were not, nor were we ever, a tribe. Not like your peaceful little village. We came from a vault, a vault where our ancestors placed importance on leading. Effectively. Fairly. We were all taught to be...politicians, if you will. Different ways to negociate. I suppose some pre-War establishment found it necessary to train some people on how to civilize, how to divide up the scattered remnants of humanity and make them an effective civilization. That was what we were taught.” 

“Funny, because that sounds a lot like the Legion,” Silus snapped, not sure whether or not he should believe this drivel. 

“The Legion?” she rolled her eyes. “A dictatorship is a failure of a civilization. We here worship Caesar, not Caesar’s ideals. What kind of effective civilization utilizes slaves? It’s barbaric. What kind of civilization bans medicine and alcohol? Tell me, Decanus,” another smirk, “How many stimpaks have you and your brothers snuck past the watchful eyes of Caesar?”

Guiltily he stared at her. Whether or not she was lying, she presented a case he often mulled over himself over the years. He let her speak. “When I say civilization, Silus, I mean it. A real civilization. A peaceful, technological one. We’re on the way in some places. Kansas is not the Kansas you were abducted from so long ago. We’ve eradicated warring tribes and puny settlements there, drove out the Legion. My job, as with other young girls, was to be trained in the art of seduction, of manipulation, of hypnosis…..men in power are often so….” she squeezed between his legs, causing his eyes to widen further, “.....deprived of attention and understanding.” 

“Are...you talking about seducing Caesar?” he snorted, not bothering to bat her hand away. She moved it, shrugging. “Caesar was easy to seduce. It’s Graham who never wavers.” Now her lips parted and she looked off into space, shimmying her shoulders excitedly. “But I do enjoy trying anyway.”

“Wait….” now he was fully intrigued, and his intuition told him what waiting silently could not; she was being honest. “How did you get into the Legion?” 

“Our army tracks the Legion. We use pre-War tech to watch their caravans and their raids. When we knew they were coming in certain areas, we sent spies, undercover decoys, to be captured. The Legion doesn’t ask questions when they enter a tiny outpost with mostly young women and girls. They are happy to rape and capture breeders, especially when we’re so--” she fluttered her eyes. “Frightened and helpless!”

“But then what happens?” 

“We are taken into the Legion, we complete our work. Some are slaves, others become recruits. And then there’s me. I pushed my way into being a Priestess.” 

Now Silus detached, settling back against the bed and marveling at this strange conversation. “How do you know I won’t turn you in?”

“I’m a spy, Silus,” she said rather exasperatedly. “I know how to size up people.”

“What does that even mean?”

“You do your job. You’re loyal to Caesar though, I can see that. You love him. I watched him take you away that day when the flood came. I watched him, and I watched you fawn. You still fawn. But the Legion? You don’t care about the Legion.” 

“Caesar cares about the Legion,” he reminded her. 

“Yes, and let him! I don’t need your help usurping the throne. Our progress is slow and calculated. I gather information. It’s boring, understimulating. But when we free this camp, we will have several hundred--close to six hundred!--slaves we can integrate back into society, we can help them become members of civilization again. I might stay as a Priestess...but if I’m bored, I’ll go back to the Society.”

Silus shook his head, squinting his eyes at the stupidity of her statements. “Then why in fuck’s name are you telling me this anyway?”

“As a priestess, out here it’s good to have...well..a male connection. I could have my choice of Centurions you know. Or Frumentarii, they are fond of our company as well. But, there’s a certain poetic ring to us, and besides...you like to read. You’re different from the standard run-of-the-mill Legionary. You may not act it, but I sense it.” She nodded wisely, but he wasn’t done interrogating. 

“Why do you need a male connection?”

“If I show interest in a male, there’s nothing suspicious about us walking around camp together. We can talk of Legion plans. You can give me information. You can protect me if we go to visit other colonies, which means I can leave that godawful smelly tent and those loud bratty children once in awhile, and get messages out to my contacts.” 

“You want me to be crucified for treason?” he snapped, and abruptly stood. Just the thought of passing on war plans to this already-obviously-insane redhead made him sick. Silus shook his head, thinking of Caesar. How disappointed Caesar would be. “Get out of my tent.” 

She laughed, standing beside him. “Oh Silus. Did you really think I would assume the best and smartest out of you? I know you’ve been reprogrammed. But that’s why I must tell you something else…”

“I don’t want to--”

From her breast she withdrew something. A polaroid. Silus glanced at it, and then dropped his raised hand, staring at the image. She brought it closer to his face. His green eyes watered. “Is that…..”

“Your mother and your sister Adelyn? It is. They look older now, I suppose, but you remember--”

“Where did you get this?”  
He took the photo, gripped it tightly. “How… is this?”

“They were safe after the flood, underground. You’d already been captured. But they came out, and we offered them food and shelter and rehabilitation. The tribe still stands, though they’ve moved a bit. We managed to convince most of the members to integrate into society but,” she drew up her shoulders. “I suppose royalty feels above such logic.” 

“Where are they.” 

“I think you owe me some secrets first,” she retorted playfully. Silus ground his teeth, in no mood for games, and sighed. 

“I won’t--”

“No need to make hasty decisions,” the girl assured him. “Keep the photo. Think it over.” 

He did keep the photo. Silus slid it into the nearest book and frowned, moving to his bed to stave off the dizziness he felt, and immediately withdrawing the photo to look again. There she was, his beautiful mother, with her sparkling eyes and her dark hair. His sister greatly resembled her, he was pleased to see. Neither of the women had Silus’s overly-large nose or sour expression. No one was sure where he’d inherited those. 

His thoughts were interrupted when a pale torso plopped in front of him, and the light weight of the young woman rested on his thighs. She plucked the photo away and placed it back in the book. “Silus...having a Priestess companion doesn’t have to be such a nasty experience. Remember, I’m trained in ways to please men. Not to fear them or jump when they grab me.” She took his hand and placed it on her breast, and Silus grunted against his own will at the bold move. 

“See?” 

He slowly and quite reluctantly removed his hand, but placed the other on her stomach and pushed her away from him. “I’m not going to help you with your fucked up plans.” Her hips were wrapped around his waist and she didn’t budge. 

“What’s it going to be tonight, Sylvan?” she teased, unbuckling the shoulder clasps with the Mark of Caesar on them. “A willing, intelligent and clean woman in your bed, or another dirty and weeping slave?”

The fabric fell forward and revealed her softly heaving breasts. The Legionary’s eyes locked in place and he thought earlier of the slaves dancing in the rain, their dark nipples erect and so tempting. They had been the usual--covered in dirt, littered with sweat, with skin rashes from the burlap sacks they wore creative reddened skin. But still he’d lusted, still he would have taken one just the same as Callum’s Legionary--albeit with slightly more tact, not in the middle of the camp with Graham lurking. Aella’s nipples were hard as well, a softer rose color. No rain or piercing midday cold caused them to stand forward; she felt pure arousal. 

The redhead noted his staring, unwinded her soft legs from his waist, now confident he was not going to push her away, and used her knees to prop herself up on Silus’s lap, bringing her torso higher and pushing her chest directly in front of his face. 

Now her confident tone dropped to a near whisper. “Gustus eos, Silus,” she prodded, and finally he relented, closing his eyes and immediately placing his mouth over the nipple hungrily. With true Legionary, brutal vigor he sucked and licked, digging his hands into her bare back and pulling her forward. Unlike the slave girls, who bit their lips or else turned away, she moaned in pure ecstasy, threading all of her fingers through his mane and murmuring to him while she tugged at his hair. 

She smelled fantastic. The overpowering smell of flowers was reduced to a light rosewater scent, a phenomenon few Legionaries ever got to indulge in while breeding with captors or even their own wives. If she was Legion, she was the prime female of the Legion, young and ready to take. But she wasn’t Legion, and somehow, that frightened Silus. The only thing he knew was Legion. Those he captured knew Legion. They were all terrified. The tables had turned. But the aching between his legs masked his fear long enough for him to caress, kiss, lick, and bite the exquisite form in front of him. 

Suddenly she pulled away, pushing against his broad shoulders with those ghostly pale hands, and he gasped, both for air and from surprise. Now that his mouth wasn’t preoccupied with a nipple he attempted, “I don’t think--”

“Shut the fuck up, you pussy, and fuck me,” she growled now, and Silus was in awe of how quickly she moved aside his tunic fabric, her dress, and then pressed herself down on top of him. He groaned in surprise--he was inside her, she had swallowed him and she was unimaginably warm and tight. Silus could no longer protest as she pushed him further back, and he collapsed onto the bed, feeling her lean forward over him. His vision was blurred from the extreme feeling of pleasure, and the tendrils of red hair that brushed his face as she rode him. 

What he didn’t see was that same sinister smile she wore, the smile she had while being escorted back to his tent.


	6. Chapter 6

The Legate, for the moment, was transfixed. He’d just killed several stray Raiders on the outskirts of the settlement, had ordered his men to capture all the stray citizens. These were poor farmers, gatherers. They would make hardy slaves. However, he wasn’t prepared to burst into the house and find the praying girl, reciting scripture he hadn’t heard in years. 

He’d reached down, hesitantly, and tore the book from her hands. It was a small, weathered version of the book of Mormon. The girl, for her part, stayed on the floor of the wooden cabin, crying and still praying to herself. Graham trained the gun on her warily, but then his large hands flipped through the book curiously. It was annotated. Pages were circled, starred, scribbled on. He lighted on a random page and read the first marked quote he saw. 

“Sing, O heavens; and be joyful, O earth; for the feet of those who are in the east shall be established; and break forth into singing, O mountains; for they shall be smitten no more; for the Lord hath comforted his people, and will have mercy upon his afflicted.”

His heart, if possible, felt slightly warm. Like coming home after a long grueling mission. Like curling by the fire with his long-lost daughter. His cold blue eyes misted over for a few seconds, and then Graham, in an unbelievable show of compassion, lowered his .45 and stared at the girl. She wore threadbare clothes, a long dress similar to the dress of the New Canaanites. Her hair was pulled away from her face in two lovely cloth bows. She was perhaps sixteen but looked no older than twelve. 

He jerked her to her feet, in his gruff voice chiding her, “Come now. Cease your tears.” 

“Are...are you….going to k-kill me?” she shrank away from him even as the sound of crying and screaming from outside the cabin could be heard. The Legionaries, doing their duty. 

“Not today,” the Legate growled. “What is your name?”

“M...mary,” she stuttered, her childlike wide blue eyes lowering, horrified, to his groin. “Are...you gonna rape me?”

Outside, it sounded as though many captures were getting that particular injustice fulfilled by Graham’s men. 

“No,” he said in his gravelley tone. “I want you to come with me, to our Fort.” 

She crumpled, looking even more pathetic, held up only by his strong arm. The girl put her face in her hands, shaking her head, and her red hair swished to and fro. “Please mister, you can do whatever you like to my body, just please don’t hurt me or make me a slave, I don’t want to be a slave.” 

“Be quiet,” he snapped, annoyed. “No harm will come to you.” Needing confirmation, he paused for a moment, and then asked, “What is the passage found in 3 Nephi, Chapter 22, Verse 13?” His icy eyes narrowed in suspicion, but she wiped her nose with her wrist and stuttered, “A….and all thy children shall be taught of the Lord…..and…..and great shall be the peace of thy children.”

“Hmmm,” he said, pleased, his thin lips showing the tiniest hint of a smile, before he holstered the gun and took her arm again, more sturdily this time. “Come, Mary.” 

 

____________________________________________________________________

 

Graham sighed, leaning back and drinking from the warm cup. He could relax in whatever extent the Legate could relax--the tactical plans and camp notes were finally squared away. The Centurions left the small meeting room, leaving only Edward and himself. Edward had no decaf, instead drinking some herbal tea made for him by a Priestess. This was a new concept for the young dictator--he’d taken the most supple, lovely slave girls and began teaching them a new position within the Legion. Children were being born too rapidly by slaves to properly educate and and segregate. He had brainstormed the idea mostly on his own, reading about Ancient Roman wet nurses. Graham, surprisingly, approved of the idea, as New Canaanites valued family above all. To have capable, handpicked women raising these children and the best of the best training from his strongest warriors would raise a new breed of Legionary. 

Edward sipped the tea and mulled at its rich taste. The Priestess had made great use of the native herbs in this spot of the Utah. It was relaxing, warm, sandy, with a bit of tang. When Caesar opened his eyes to look at his second in command, Joshua stared from under his dark brown hair, looking impassively at him with his eerie eyes. Edward motioned toward the tea. 

“It was made by Aella, your little Mormon rescue.” 

“Mmm,” Graham said stoically, returning his attention to the notes left by Frumentarius Marcellus. 

“She was a fantastic addition to the Priestesses. I think she may become a favorite among the children. That...mothering thing. It comes naturally to Mormon women.” 

“Most of them,” Graham agreed over the coffee, thinking fleeting thoughts of his wife. She’d hated their children, hated being stuck at home with two small girls while he went out to translate. Hated being pregnant. Hated the holy consummation of marriage. In the end, hated Graham. Not that he blamed her for that part. 

“Have you had her yet?” Caesar pressed, tilting his head in his familiar good humored fashion. Sometimes his brashness was appreciated, usually among the Centurions and Praetorians, but his perversion was wasted on Graham, who stared even more stonily with his electric eyes and furrowed brow. 

“She is too young,” Graham stated matter-of-factly. 

“She’s childbearing age, which means she’s breeding age,” Caesar argued. “You’re too uptight.” 

“Mmm,” Graham admitted, thumbing through the papers. 

“Do you wish me to send for her?” Edward asked now, amiably. “I can have her go to your tent. You really need to try her, Joshua….she’s….divine.” Now the scent of tea filled his nostrils as he sighed, remembering the young girl’s milky thighs and soft round breasts. Thinking aloud he exhaled, “Fantastic at oral--”

“I thought the point of having Priestesses,” Graham said sternly, “Was so they could make your empire Holy. Sacred. Teach Legionaries the law you have set forth.” 

“And so it is,” Edward shrugged, still pleased with his memory. “Women are capable of raising children, teaching them fundamentals, and still having sex lives. Even Mormons do that.” When Graham sighed in protest, he pressed on, “Joshua, women have sex drives just as men do. Some of them, including your little redheaded save, even more voracious than men’s. It’s biology, it’s natural. They choose the prime males as any other females in nature. Our slaves breed and we allow it. Our men breed with the slaves and we allow it. Why would I take our most beautiful, fertile, intelligent women, and turn them into nuns? Christ! The beauty of Priestesses is that they get to flaunt their sexuality. It’s a beautiful thing.” He tapped his fingers against the wooden table. “In Aella’s case….a very beautiful thing.” 

When Graham growled, returning to the notes, Edward shifted topics. “How are the Latin classes?”


	7. Chapter 7

The Legate pursed his lips as the Priestesses all settled down in the dusty schoolroom. They were a bunch of giggling girls, still excited to be away from their lives as slaves, eager to please Caesar as his new teachers and mothers of Legionaries. And Graham had been selected to teach Latin, because he was the best and fastest teacher. Even Praetorians didn’t capture language the way New Canaanites did; it was something ingrained in them from preWar times, when Mormons went on missions around the world.

It had been years since he had taught, however. And back then, he identified as Mormon himself. Now he twirled a .45 in one hand, held a Latin choir book in the other hand, and leaned against the old schoolhouse wall, some forlorn place in once-Followers territory that the Legion had overtaken mere weeks ago. Confronted with the cackling mess of teenagers, Graham barked out today’s lesson, causing them to go from excited to worried. Not all schoolteachers carried guns. Even fewer were known as the man who killed his own family for the Legion. He may have been a level-headed instructor, but just barely. Graham would shoot anyone without a second thought.

One pair of blue eyes gave off the impression of being invested, intrigued by the dead language--which suited her well, as she was the top pupil--but behind the mask of innocent fascination, she studied Graham as he paced between desks. Correcting inflection, spelling out longer words. Her eyes flicked to his tight-fitting jeans as he moved in front of her, then when he paced back, arm crossed over his chest and book open, his grey-blue eyes scanning the text, her eyes dropped to his broad back, narrow waist, his unbelievably well-sculpted Mormon ass, perfectly in place for her viewing pleasure thanks to the jeans.

Seducing the hardened Legate was part of her mission, of course. Even if he would never divulge any war secrets or plans the way other Legionaries would, he was a man in power. The first step of crumbling any Legion was to be in charge of the men in power. Caesar had been easy, with no holds barred and a huge ego. She liked the man, saw why many considered him a God. He wasn’t the most long-lasting in bed, but he was fun and adventurous, surprisingly intelligent with pillow talk. But Graham? Graham was the one who deserved to be called a God.

He turned and pointed at her, snapping her out of her thoughts. She’d learned Latin when the Kansas Serpent Knights, her Vault’s fraternity, first advised it from all of their “Flower faces”, the codename for their young troupe of female spies. The Legion was a young, strong force then, and the administrators of KSK knew the Legion would come. Knowing their language was a must. So, though she was fluent, the sixteen-year-old Aella stuttered, lowering her dark lashes demurely as she recited the line.

“Laudamus te.” He nodded slowly, absorbed in the book.  
“Benedícimus te.” Graham nodded again, stroking his chin thoughtfully.   
Her gaze lingered on his long, thin fingers. She licked her lips and feigned nervousness.   
“Adoramus te.”

He caught her purposeful mistake and his eyes finally left the book, lighting on her.   
“The inflection falls on the second ‘a’, Aella. Never the first. Find your rhythm. Adoramus.”   
“Adoramus te.” She corrected herself, pushing her red locks behind an ear.   
“Glorificamus te.” She paused before the final line, Graham’s nod returning to its slow distracted way as he ignored the heaving cleavage of the teenager and produced an apple from his tactical vest, biting into the fruit and awaiting her to continue with the most difficult line.

“Gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam.”

Graham paused before his second bite, dropping the hand with the apple to his side, and folding the book downward. “Excellent, Aelle,” he commended, his eyes finally meeting hers with a look of small, tempered approval. She flashed an excited smile. “Well done,” he applauded again, and her voice was tiny and unsure as she responded, “Gratias, Legate.”

It was for another moment that his blues were focused on hers, and then he was back to biting the apple and pointing at another girl. She exhaled, her heart fluttering. It wasn’t just the power of the Legate that attracted her--she had indeed learned the fatal attraction of monsters, killers, men without conscience, men with unlimited power. It was something else. Perhaps it was his old-fashioned gentlemanliness when dealing with younger girls. His eyes never so much as left her face. It could have been his strong jawline, his deep raspy voice, or those intense blue eyes. She couldn’t be sure. However, the girl knew that the way to the Legate’s zipper was through modesty, not whorishness, so she played it safe, even after putting her toe in the door to become one of the first Priestesses.

Class was dismissed eventually, Graham giving the girls all the same assignment; a short poem on War, to be written in Latin. Caesar pushed strongly toward advocating art (mostly art dedicated to him) among the Priestesses, but Graham was no art teacher. She purposely took her time gathering her things, being the last one to leave, as Graham crossed the dirty prewar schoolroom and sat at the desk, looking rather lost in thought.

“Sorry sir,” she apologized as she hurriedly scooped everything up. Uncoincidentally, her Book of Mormon, which Graham had returned to her upon her arrival at the Fort, slipped out of the pile. That was another trust-winning device: the fraternity information gatherers knew the Legion’s Legate, the fiercest warrior and Caesar’s right hand man, had once been a devoted Mormon missionary. She’d learned the boring scriptures back to front for him, before ever meeting him. She’d expected an old withered grouchy Republican.

How wrong she had been.

“It’s quite all right,” Graham said in such a growl of a voice that it didn’t quite sound all right, but now he opened a desk drawer and ruffled through the papers. He was dismayed to see that they were Followers of the Apocalypse papers, curriculum on teaching English and History. Edward was fond of the old group, but Graham hated the pacifists. He’d willingly driven them out of this area. Pulling out the stacks and thumbing through, wondering if they had a Latin curriculum, he asked his pupil, “Do you still follow the scriptures?”

The girl inched her way forward to his desk, twirling her red hair nervously with one pale finger. Graham paused in his ruffling of essays (a folder entitled “Haiku”--apparently he was not the only professor who promoted poetry?) as she answered in a guilty and cautious voice.

“I do try,” she said, her blue eyes misting over in a ways his rarely did anymore. “The Legion has taken...things from me. The ability to follow some covenants.”

“Do you need bread and water in your tent for Communion?”

She nodded meekly, and he assured her, “I will see to it. What else is there?”

“Well,” she bounced on her heels, frightened. “I’ve been...well, when I was a slave, I was…….”

He raised his eyebrows expectantly.  
“...raped,” she whispered meekly, casting her eyes down. “I’ve had to learn to...to give pleasure to men. I’m just...really confused about where I stand with God.”

Speaking honestly, the Legate responded, “I am not the person to speak to about God. I have strayed too far off that path. It is a path of my past. It may be, with the Legion, that this is a path of your past as well. We all must make sacrifices.” Saying those words made him feel dead inside. Deader than usual. He flared his nostrils.

“Legate…” now she approached his desk from the side. He glanced downward at the modest toga she wore. It hit her knees, but he remembered what Edward had said during their coffee break. Something about her soft thighs. Almost in disgust, he raised his gaze. “I just wanted to...to thank you for everything…”

“You remind me of a simpler, gentler time in my life.” It was a clipped answer. He sifted through submitted haikus, written on recycled paper. Some of the script was tiny, other writings large and girlish. “A time I have no interest in, anymore. But I suppose there will always be ties to New Canaanites and myself, and our religion, just as Caesar has a soft spot for his Followers.” He hoped this would be explanation enough, that it would suffice and stop causing the teenager to feel indebted to him.

But she only moved closer, and he tensed, realizing that the Legion had already started shaping her to be more of a woman than she had bargained for. To turn her views toward their philosophy of women, of sex, of the animalistic natures in the camps. “I know it’s not...not much, but I thought, if you wanted my gratitude, I could give it to you…” her lip wavered and he realized she had no idea what she was doing, simply offering him the thing all the other Legionaries wanted.

Graham leaned back in his chair and studied her closely, but barely paused before he said in his grating tone, “I have no such need of that kind of gratitude. I am not an animal with uncontrollable desires. Something my men need to be taught,” he muttered the last sentence to himself. “I told you the reason I spared you. It has nothing to do with taking your body.” He didn’t add that the thought of bedding a sixteen year old was revolting to him; his oldest daughter would have been sixteen by now. It was creepy. Unnecessary. Plenty of slaves were in their twenties or thirties and had acceptable bodies.

Her shoulders sagged, perhaps in rejection, perhaps in relief. She squeaked out her thanks and swiftly exited the musty room, leaving him to set aside the papers. No Latin. Nothing he could use.

One of the haikus had caught his eye, however, and he read the spiky, not-too-masculine, not-too-feminine script distractedly, before leaving the empty room to itself.

_Fire man, crazy man_   
_Wielding his Deadly Fire Axe_   
_Burned Away my Life_


	8. Chapter 8

Silus had put the strange sexual encounter from his mind as he went to his briefing in the morning. He couldn’t put the image of his mother and sister’s faces away, however, so the usually tan and healthy Decanus hid, pale and nervous, behind his goggles and facemask that morning. He welcomed the mission, the chatter of Decanii even as he sat rather slouchy in his chair around the table in the tent.

“We’re not merchants!” one leader protested, annoyed. Here between senior officers and their Centurion, speech was freer, not restricted to the singular praise and happy effort to conquer the world for Caesar. “What next? Marry the townswomen and build houses to raise families in?”

“Probably not,” Gallus said with a chuckle, pacing around the table. Silus kept his eyes on the man’s plumed helmet. “Take them as wives maybe….but only after assimilating them into the Legion.”

“So why are we not doing that first?” Callum asked with a tone of irony in his voice. “Scouts tell me the town is not well fortified. They pander to merchants and whores passing through this area. It would be an excellent outpost if we took it over.”

“Because right in the middle of this settlement lies a large Followers camp,” Gallus reminded them. “Caesar has always had these orders. We are to leave them be. For now, our mission is instead to bring Arizona and Legion goods for trade, to recruit what willing soldiers they may have. In these small shit towns there are usually nothing but young, bored farmers. We can give them a purpose. A choice. Willing soldiers are always happiest.” He cracked his knuckles absent-mindedly, and Silus allowed his green eyes to drift away from the helmet and toward nothingness. He felt nauseated. 

“Isn’t this a mission more suited to the Frumentarians?” the first Decanus, Marius, pressed. “They’re the social type. I’m not much of a soldier if I carry my purse into town looking to trade meats and talk about signing up for the Legion.” 

“We have several undercover men in the area already,” Gallus reminded him. The tall brute of a man finally sat, reclining in his chair. “They’ve deduced this would be the best course of action. We take soldiers, we gather more information on the area and neighborhood settlements before attacking. There are still scouts out there. And when we do make our move to assimilate the colony, we’ll know it inside and out. You’re not down there to play card games and make friends. It is our centuria that will lead the town to destruction once we have approval from the Legate to do so.” 

Silus was indifferent to the mission itself, as usual. He liked that for the moment, it sounded low-risk. He probably wouldn’t get shot in the foot in some dumb pioneer village. But it was also a great way to get him out of this camp and away from that crazy Priestess. His thoughts were still reeling from the night before. Why couldn’t he just enjoy mediocre, mundane sex like the rest of the Legionaries? Why did he have to go through wild, near-blackout sex with the crazy one? 

With the briefing complete, the men dispersed, most heading toward the food tent for breakfast. They had to report for the morning training in a mere half hour, so it was important to get a meal while they could. Silus couldn’t think of eating, but knew he had to feign normalcy until he could get his head out of this fog and figure out what he was going to do. Now away from the formal meet, he pulled his goggles down around his neck and lowered the face mask. The mountain air was crisp and cool, and smelled of rain. After living the past ten years in an absolute wasteland of a desert, he intended to appreciate every moment of this mission. 

“You look rather pale, Amicus?” It wasn’t a statement. The smooth, almost effeminate voice spoke beside Silus. The man fell into step beside him on the left, and likewise removed his head gear, being one to talk with his ashen complexion and white-blond hair. His shock of hair was almost as unsettling against the dark mountainside scene as his light eyes, which seemed to glow in the cold morning air. When he exhaled, Silus saw his breath. 

“So do you,” Silus quipped, not in the mood to talk. But this was one of very few friends he had in the Legion. The other men weren’t sure of Vulpes, didn’t quite know how to take his eccentricities. Only in battle did he have any ground for being called a warrior and hero. He was already one of Caesar’s favorite Decanii, though Graham remained neutral on the young man’s abilities.

Vulpes didn’t laugh or smile, simply turned his gaze from the taller brunette and toward the mist-covered lake in the distance. This area of the Rockies dipped down into several golden meadows which hadn’t been levelled for farming yet. Nearby was the lake; a perfect spot for agriculture and irrigation. The blond’s expression was unreadable as he pressed, “Is everything all right?”

Knowing the intuitive man too well, Silus knew he’d better say something. Vulpes could spot lies immediately, was mistrustful of anyone with anything to hide. Even though the two had never fought and Silus felt, deep down, that Vulpes would not betray him, the threat of his mother frightened him too much. Instead he said, “A Priestess has taken interest in me.”

Even this didn’t cause Vulpes to lose his stoicity. “Is this not desirable?”

“She seems……” Silus dug around in his brain carefully before deciding on, “Crazy.”

“I see.” Vulpes sounded satisfied. “I too have...difficulty….finding a suitable female to call mine, or indeed to even consider breeding with. I would rather be on the battlefield.” This was perhaps the shy young man’s way of making a joke, and Silus snorted despite himself. 

“Food?” the taller man asked, but Vulpes shook his head dismissively. “I have uneaten food in my tent.” 

“Ave, Vulpes.” 

“See you at training,” and the pale man was lost in the crowd of morning trainees, doubling back to the rows of officer quarters. 

Once the feathered top of Silus had disappeared into the food tent, Vulpes scowled sourly and headed toward his own century’s tents. Silus’s was near his own; Vulpes always kept partitions in his own tent to watch what happened around camp. He had no desire to be blinded by his own surroundings. Last night he’d listened to some rather….new….sexual noises coming from one of the tents nearby. The woman was either faking having an extremely good time, or she was a sex fiend. The man was also loud. There were many sexual encounters in officers’ tents, enough that this one would go unnoticed by most. 

But it disturbed Vulpes, as slaves were not typically so robust, and his suspicions were confirmed when he rose to peer out of the darkened curtain and saw, late in the night, a pale long-robed Priestess traipse out of Silus’ tent. This was strange for several reasons, mostly because Priestesses were “above” Decanii in terms of rank and relationship. Also, Silus was not one to give in to mass sexual escapades, but it was even stranger that he would seek out a devoted woman of Caesar. The man was not fond of the indoctrinations given to younger Legionaries. 

So it seemed that this morning, with his restless gaze, Silus was at least honest. A Priestess had interest in him. This was also strange….how would a Priestess select a random Decanus? Silus was hidden behind goggles and a facemask most of his day. Just to be certain, Vulpes slipped into the tent of his comrade. 

It was mostly bare; Vulpes tore up the bedclothing anyway, searching for…? He wasn’t quite certain. In any case, there was nothing there, and he cringed at the remembrance of the loud noises and exuberant joy he’d heard the night before. He peered into the water pitcher, noted how strange it was that Silus had books, and then on picking them up, saw a portrait slide out and fall onto the dirt. 

Perplexed, Vuples scooped up the photo and stared at it. There were no dates, no names, no writing. Technology was disallowed in the Legion and this included cameras, so who had taken this photo? Vulpes studied the two women in the picture. Their garments were unfamiliar to him, but it only took a slightly closer look to see Silus’s dark-rimmed eyes and brow, his high cheekbones and large lips on the face of both women, though they looked much happier than the scowling Decanus he’d trained with over the years. 

Interesting. How had Silus managed to get a photo of his family? Hearing someone approach, the blond slipped the photo back into the book and then exited the tent, heading toward the training grounds with an empty stomach and a head full of thoughts.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sex/violence warning.

She came to Silus’s tent that night as well, before the sun disappeared behind the blue-grey mountains. He was taking off his boots, trading them for sandals since there had been no rain today, when she entered. Her robe was shorter, more casual, but still stunning. It was a light purple, such a strange color to see in the Legion, but the contrast against her skin and hair was beautiful. 

He didn’t react, but continued lacing up his sandals. He had to pack a small armor supplement and gather extra weapons for their trek to the settlement in a few hours; they were leaving under cover of night. Gallus’ side of camp was full of Legionaries and slaves working together to prepare for the short journey and subsequent camp. 

“Good evening Decanus,” Aelle purred, and he didn’t respond. She walked across the tent and sat next to him on the bed. 

Finally Silus mustered, “This isn’t a good place to talk. Someone will find out what you’re up to.” 

“All I need is a simple yes or no,” she argued. 

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you,” he replied. “I’m going away tonight anyway.”

“I know,” she flashed a smile, and then wordlessly stuck a note into his armor, which lay against the wall nearby. “I have a contact in that settlement. If you’d be so kind.” 

He stared at her, impressed with the boldness, and then asked, “Exactly how many people know about this?” 

The girl shrugged. She seemed even less forthcoming with information tonight. The Decanus glared at the note, tucked into his arm sleeve, and then said, “What if my answer is no?”

“Your family is under protection, limited, but we shield smaller tribes from the Legion’s wandering eyes. They’re great targets, with just enough people to break down easily and bring into the Legion as captures. It is only my order that the protection remains. They’ve elected to be a free nomadic tribe, but…” she shrugged. “I may as well lead the Legion right to them.” 

In seconds Silus’s hand was around her throat, crushing her windpipe. His dark skin contrasted with her pale neck, but she simply gasped and smiled, her eyes watering. He was too angry to notice that her flesh rose with goosebumps at his touch, or that the thin fabric showed the peaks of her breasts. She managed to choke out, “The condition also--exists--that if I am harmed---”

He dropped his hand, reluctantly, and then said in a low, threatening tone, “If you even think of leading the Legion to my family, I’ll kill you myself. Don’t forget that.” 

“I don’t want to kill your family,” she said, rubbing her hand up his muscular thigh. “I want us to help each other.” 

Rather defeated, the Decanus numbly found himself asking, “What do you want me to do?”

“For now? You deliver that message. Go into the Followers Camp. When you return, express interest in me. I’ve spread the rumor that I fell for you when I saw you going through books on the cart. It’s believable, and…” she grinned that beautiful, frightening grin. “I think it’s kinda cute, don’t you?”

The snarl on his face dictated that his answer was a no. 

“Now, why don’t I….take your mind off this…” 

Silus bolted up, fighting the swelling in his loins and focusing on the internal image of a nude Supermutant to quell his more primal instincts. “I haven’t eaten dinner yet. I’m going out.” Tight-lipped, he crossed the room away from her, and she called after him, “I’ll be here waiting for you.” 

When the Decanus had huffed out, she giggled to herself and fell back on his soft bed, tired and feeling electric at the same time. The redhead sniffed in his pillow, his blankets, writhing around in the amazing smell that was Silus. With some training, he would learn to love sex. To give into his urges without hesitation. She would teach him. It wasn’t part of her mission. Just….a personal venture. 

It was after some self-exploring with her fingers rubbing the shorter-length toga, and cupping her swollen breasts, that she fell into a soft sleep, but was awakened when the tent flap opened and Silus entered. The girl stirred, stretched, yawned, and then had no time to react before he had landed on the bed, boots still on, armor still on and crushing her legs as he straddled her. When two hands grabbed her wrists and pulled them up beside her head, the girl giggled. “I see you’re coming aro--”

“Silence!” Leaning forward in the dark, she saw that this was not Silus at all; it was an unfamiliar Legionary, one with the most dead eyes she’d ever seen. His skin rivaled hers in paleness; where hers stored sunshine and had creamy peach tones, his was ashen and grey, as though he were made entirely of old bone. Despite being young he looked foul, corrupt, and angry. His eyes were the same shade as the Legate’s but far more sinister, far less human, far less animal even. They seemed to belong to a ghost or demon. 

“Who are you?” she asked, startled. 

“I will ask you the same question, profligate,” Vulpes sneered, grabbing her red hair. “Who are you?”

“I’m--Aella!” she breathed, “A Prieste--”

His hand tightened, yanking her head back. “I was standing outside of your tent. I heard everything.” Vulpes withdrew a small knife and held it to the white throat. “Tell me who you are and I will make this quick.”

“And Silus?” she asked, choking against the blade. “What will you tell him when his family is--made slaves?”

Vulpes paused; Silus was one of the only people he truly cared about. He’d heard the conversation. As thoughts of Silus finding out his family, who he obviously still cared for, were slaves, the girl spoke again, writhing away from the blade. “If you tell the Legate--he will probably kill Silus….and you too…”

“Shut up, whore!” Vulpes said, sticking the knife closer to the side of her neck. She breathed warily, eyes wide and panicked, and he quickly realized that she was possibly speaking the truth. Graham would kill the spy, the Legionary who secreted the spy, and likely the giver of information: he was volatile, like an out of control wildfire. And out here he had no Caesar to soothe his temper, no endless supply of profligates to murder. 

She was still staring at him when he reluctantly withdrew the knife. Vulpes sat back on his haunches, unsure what to do, and out of anger he suddenly backhanded the prone girl across her face. She gasped, grabbed at her cheek, and then Vulpes, the Legionary who tortured and killed more animals and then humans than he could count, realized he had somehow bizarrely gotten aroused. He put a hand to her throat and leaned forward, so close that their noses nearly touched, his wispy blond bangs falling into his face. 

“You’re a filthy whore,” he repeated. “It will not be immediate but I swear to you, upon Caesar himself, that I will find who you are, who you work for, and I will kill you all. I will destroy you so slowly you will beg for death.” 

Despite her gasps for air, she chortled with laughter, her nostrils flaring, and between blinks, she winked at him, eyelashes fluttering. “Good luck,” she offered, and Vulpes realized that she was pushing up with her pelvis, grinding her lower body against his inner thighs, with only the thin fabric of her toga separating their flesh.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Graphic content obligatory warning.

Silus was not looking forward to returning to his tent, but he tried to look on the bright side: at least he didn’t live a dull fucking life. He would have felt even more excited to pass messages outside of the camps if the guilt of leaving Caesar to come to this place wasn’t fresh in his mind. Silus missed his leader. He longed for the day he would become a Praetorian. By then, he hoped, this Aella redhead would be dead or better, turned into the slave pen and cut off from whatever agency she worked for. He was perhaps being idealistic by hoping that this scheme would go to plan and he could preserve his family while continuing to gain favor with his Centurion.

And maybe one day he could even see them again. That was a tiny, threadbare hope, clouded with optimism...but he longed for the idea. 

The dinner tent was full of food tonight, extra servings for those men who would soon trek across the mountains in cover of darkness. Silus was one of them, but the young Decanus had no desire for food and instead resigned himself to another night of twisted and strange sex with his new redhead. He drifted away from the thought and, as he trudged through the now-muddy grounds of tents, reminded himself of his mantra. His life wasn’t fucking boring.

At first the sounds of a female screaming in pain and pleasure wafted through his hearing and didn’t catch in the filter. He was accustomed to such noises, especially at night in the tents. But as his steps fell more softly Silus realized he recognized the throes of ecstasy. It was Aella moaning. He shrugged to himself...was it really that odd she’d lost interest in unhappy, broody and unpleasant Silus? Perhaps she would move on. But again he was thrown off when, as he approached his tent, he realized that’s where the noise was coming from.

He also heard grunting and growls, of a lower tone. 

Silus was stunned. Even if some recruit had for some reason snuck into his tent and gotten hot and heavy with Silus’s Priestess, the young officer was too shocked to be angry. He was just confused. Deeply deeply confused. He drew his machete cautiously and used it to pull aside the red flap of the tent. The inside was lit with several candles, and there hunched forward, leaning over his makeshift table, was a nude Aella. She was shaking violently from whoever the Legionary was, mounted behind her, knelt on Silus’s bed. 

He was so surprised he dropped the machete onto the carpet. Vulpes’ face was not one of pain and ecstasy, as Aella’s was. His teeth were bared, his light blue eyes sharp and glittering with malice. The Decanus only stared, slack-jawed, and after several seconds Vulpes slowed his thrusts, coming back to earth and blearily looking over at his fellow Legionary. Aella was quicker to respond, biting her gorgeously plump lip and moaning toward Silus, beckoning with her pale arms. “Silus,” she breathed, wiping sweat from her brow, “Join us.” 

He inched away as though she’d just suggested he detonate a nuclear bomb over Caesar’s head, but Vulpes, still heated and still buried deep inside the woman, grabbed her hair and twisted it, pulling her neck to the side. He muttered something, probably to himself in Latin, but then turned to Silus and pushed Aella away, his kilt dropping back down in front of his groin. Barely concealing his anger and still holding the girl’s head he seemed to agree: “Amicus….” his breathing was bated as well, “I welcome you to join me in defiling this…” he twisted the hair even tighter, eliciting a moan from the girl, “profligate whore….if you wish it.” Sounding more like the smooth calculated Vulpes he added, “Unless you do not wish it, in which case I must offer my apol--”

“Fuck it,” Silus conceded, and unbuckled his armor. He was going to have to have sex with this insane fucking ball of crazy tonight one way or the other. Might as well have a friend nearby. Aella was already moving back in place, leaning forward, and tugged Silus’s toga down, leaving him in nothing but sandals while she bent forward and swallowed him to the hilt, Vulpes’s eyes misting over as the man went back into his own plane of existence and entered her again. She moaned around Silus’s cock and he closed his eyes, not really wanting to focus on the bizarre scene in front of him. When he opened his eyes moments later they fell to the bedside table. He immediately noticed the books were askew (was it that odd, considering how intensely Vulpes was fucking?) and the snapshot was halfway tucked out. 

He narrowed his eyes and grabbed the girl’s head, threading his hands through her hair much gentler than Vulpes had done earlier. Troublesome. 

Thank god he was leaving soon.


	11. Chapter 11

Silus had been in civilizations like this one. He’d helped overtake many. This one seemed no different. He was pleased for the opportunity to be miles away from the Fort. Vulpes was not on the list to go, but neither was Callum. The only two real men he talked to outside of barking orders, or being yelled at by Gallus. There was precious little yelling here at this camp; the men set up their tents and moseyed into town like innocent tourists, drawing either screams of horror or shady looks from the townsfolk. As Caesar ordered, Gallus himself, along with Silus and another Decanus, requested access to the Followers of the Apocalypse camp and extended the letter of goodwill from Caesar. The man had such a soft spot for his old tribe, it was almost endearing. They would first ask the group if there were tasks befitting a Legionary that could be carried out, and then stick around for the inevitable questions and recruiting. 

The rest of the town wouldn’t be so lucky. The Followers were right in the midst of this settlement, but once scouting and orders wrapped up and the word was sent from Legate Graham, the town would be razed. But to many in Followers camps: drug addicts, homeless, orphans, unloved: the Legion wanted willing soldiers and slaves. Sometimes it got them.

“Actually,” the young Followers leader said, sizing up the massive Centurion and his two faceless Decanii as they stood in his office, “There is something you could do to help...if it interests you.” 

“The requests of your tribe are to be met within reason, on the orders of Caesar,” Gallus assured him. “How may we assist you?”

“Our guards are hired mercenaries and don’t like our low pay,” the man began, eyeing Silus’s large bicep as it crossed his chest. “They have even less incentive to teach the men how to defend themselves. Some basic training and guard work, particularly with the gardens, would be nice.” 

Gallus opened his mouth, but the other Decanus, a sleazy man named Marius, drawled, “What exactly do you need protection from? The townspeople?”

The Followers leader sniffed. “Actually, no. The gardens are on the outskirts of the town, and we are much better at tending them than the townspeople. It is our service here. However, the gardens are near a mountain valley, where a pre-War nuclear facility was laid to waste during the great War. There can be threats of Yao Guai, Deathclaws, and less frequently wolves and large mountain cats. There is a large herd of deer that graze on the mountains and these draw the predators in. We try to minimize death and accidents, but with poorly trained guards….” the man shrugged. 

Gallus shot Marius a seething look before saying in a voice that swelled with gratitude, “My men will gladly assist you in the days to come. I will dispatch both Decanii and their Legionaries today, unless you require other help?”

_________________

 

Silus and Marius left most of the gruntwork---teaching the morons of the apocalypse how to aim, fire, and load weapons, how to use melee weapons, and how to dispatch themselves around a guard perimeter--to their Legionaries and dedicated their own time to drawing out a schedule and map for these clueless tribals to execute. Marius bitched, excessively in Latin, over the table as he wrote, but Silus was mostly silent. He was tired from the long and intense night behind him, and helping the Followers was Caesar’s order. Thus he would follow it. If these people meant something to Caesar they must mean something to him as well. 

A ringing bell signaled dismissal of school for the Follower’s Camp. They went to school right alongside the townspeople’s children, but as most of them were orphans or escaped slaves (the irony) they had their own meager homes inside the wooden cabins built by the Followers. Now the filed past the pair of Legionaries who sat outdoors at a picnic table, heads over parchment like schoolboys themselves. Silus was busy writing when Marius spoke up, his concealed, feathered head turned toward the line of dirty but happy looking children and teenagers.

“Look at them,” he drawled in Latin, and Silus wearily obliged, his own facemask hiding his uninterested expression as he tilted his head. “Useless slobbering mangy cretins.” 

“We are not to touch them,” Silus reminded him, speaking English to break the other man’s trance, but it was useless. His face was not visible but Silus could hear the drool and foggy lust in Marius’s voice. He spoke in Latin. “There. The two rear girls. Older. Beautiful. Nigro capillum? Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo.” The man clucked to himself, no doubt fixated on the teenager’s breasts under her threadbare clothing, but Silus caught the look of the girl. She’d heard the Legionary. And unbelievably, from the flabbergasted and insulted look on her face, she understood what he’d said. Marius chuckled, his head already back toward the table, still muttering about how badly he needed a slave on this mission, but Silus watched the pair of girls.

They were teenagers, but well-developed. He would guess maybe seventeen or eighteen. The pair walked close enough and guarded each other well enough to be sisters, though two sisters had never looked more different. One was short and petite, the ‘black haired’ that Marius had noticed. Her skin was dark and her fierce eyes darker, and now she turned, still glaring suspiciously at the Legionaries, and whispered to her companion. This girl was tall and lean and pale, with a long blond braid, every bit as opposite her friend, but when the girl whispered to her, she too turned and stared with aggression and indignation. 

“Shut the fuck up,” Silus snapped, trying to get a better look of them as they passed, but there were so many children running amok and kicking up dust, he had no chance. The two turned their backs and he gazed at the long dark hair of the shorter girl--so like his mother’s hair--and then the taller girl. Strangely, her gait seemed familiar to him and couldn’t place why. It was a long-legged lope, but he worried less about that and more about word getting out among the Follower’s of their brazen intentions. Marius cursed back at Silus, but the other didn’t even bother to respond. He turned back to the paperwork.


	12. Chapter 12

He liked being out here. In addition to not having a crazy redhead holding his family over his head, Silus was also away from the Legate, and instead of being surrounded by foolhardy Legionaries and cowering, smelly slaves, he got to walk among regular society. A part of him longed for the integration, but his conscience always butted in and reminded him there was no such thing. It was a facade. And soon enough yet another ‘settlement’ would fall to the Legion’s hand. 

So he simply enjoyed it while he could; walking through the streets, drawing questioning looks from townspeople, using his Legion coin at markets and explaining over and over again the currency exchange, eyeing the women. The women with their notions of freedom and equality. Silus found them far more appetizing than slaves, and far less alarming than his new apparent faux-girlfriend. They did their hair and wore guns at their sides. If he ever took a wife, he wanted it to be a woman who did so. 

The Legionaries were busy training the Followers how to shoot, how to make ammunition, and how to fend themselves from attackers. Silus made his way from town out to the farmyard, where amidst dewey rows of potatoes and cabbage, the men sparred with the Followers, some disinterested, others just as happy as Silus for the break in battles and slaughter. A shooting range had been set up, as well as several sparring dummies like the ones used in Legion training camps. The Decanus quickly counted the red among the crowd; two Legionaries were missing. 

His teeth ground behind the balaclava as he counted again, and then approached a young Legionary who was assisting a wary blond woman with a pistol. 

“Where is Marius?” he growled so ferociously that the woman took a step back, but the Legionary snapped forward, alert, and then answered his commander, “He uh. I saw him leave the field not ten minutes ago sir.” 

“Where was he headed?”

The young man pointed in the distance; the gentle fields ended abruptly in a Colorado-esque jagged mountainside. There they met the forest, but the maze of rocks looked nearly impassable due to their unevenness. Silus frowned invisibly and then took off. The Legionary shrugged at the woman and then re-steadied her grip. The Decanus unsheathed his machete as he stepped away from the dirt and onto the crumbling lava rock, looking around for Marius. He had a strong hunch where the man had gone. Marius was a Legion fanatic, he wouldn’t desert. But he was also a sleaze who had a penchant for rape and necrophilia. The other missing Legionary Silus couldn’t recall the name of; he was one of Callum’s men. But if Marius was dragging off people to have ‘fun’ with in the absence of slaves, he would have taken an accomplice. It was far easier to have a lookout. 

Soon enough the voices sounded from the middle of the rocks; Silus set his jaw and hopped around the unfriendly landscape until he saw them. Unsurprisingly the other Legionary was stationed on a hill, facing the field Silus had just come from. Silus had, however, purposely tracked the edge of the area, so the lookout was rather dumbly staring at a wall of rocks. The Decanus paused at the scuffle; two girls, and Marius. He was shouting at them to shut the fuck up and make their deaths painful, but Silus was caught off-guard by the fact that both women were cursing right back. Women standing up for themselves was not something he heard often--maybe from the spare slave capture the first few days she was at the Fort, but then she’d soon be beaten into submission or crucified--and the Decanus actually choked back laughter when one of them, the shorter of the two, hissed and picked up a rock and broke it over Marius’s head. 

“You little bitch,” he threatened, turning and grabbing the other female, a blond, then the one who’d assaulted him. “You just insured that I will kill you and then fuck you, instead of the other way around.” 

She struggled and Silus rolled his eyes; he’d seen enough. Now he withdrew his own gun, a submachine holstered at his hip, and held the trigger down as he aimed at the lookout on the hill. The sharp TACKTACKTACKTACK of full-auto bullets mowed down Callum’s soldier, and Marius and the two women turned sharply at the intrusion. 

Aiming his gun at his own man, Silus gingerly descended the hill, sliding as the pebbles skimmed under his boots. Marius looked equally frightened and angry at being disturbed. “Followers are off limits,” Silus reminded him lamely, speaking as though Marius were a child asking yet again if he could have a treat. The man began to protest, but then the dark-haired woman used her free hand to get another rock and this time, slam it in his face. 

Silus didn’t hold back his laughter at this, tossing his plumed head back, but the Legionary bellowed, his nose leaking blood already, “I TAKE WHAT I PLEASE!” Silus didn’t know if he was speaking to his captain or to the woman--girl, Silus could now see that he was closer--as he lunged for her, stumbling as he did so. He let go of the blond, who scrambled for his machete. Her pale hand gripped the the weapon and just as Marius tackled the brunette to the ground, the blond had shoved the blade through his spine. 

Silus paused in enjoying the moment, slightly disturbed at the ease with which the so-called peaceful Followers teenager hacked at the man’s back, withdrawing the machete and then turning the blade toward his neck. The brunette scurried away, her dark complexion going green as the blond motioned toward the now-dead guard. Silus watched, dumbfounded, as the blond hit Marius as he screeched one last miserable time, implanting the blade in his skull while her companion gingerly removed the dead Legionary lookout’s handgun from his corpse. 

In seconds the blond had retrieved Marius’s shotgun and now she stood, pushing the stray hairs from her face as she aimed at Silus.

He laughed at the absurdity of the situation, even as the short brunette slid back into place beside her more violent friend and uncertainly, still looking green, aimed her gun at Silus too. 

“Stop laughing,” the blond commanded, and even her friend looked over in surprise. 

“Why are you pointing that thing at me?” Silus asked in a jolly tone. “I’m not going to rape you.” 

“Or capture or enslave us either, I suppose,” she snapped. Silus was still smiling.

“Not in the immediate future, no,” 

“Andy, this isn’t a good idea,” the brunette whispered. “He shot one of them too….” 

“He’s a Decanus, he’s an officer. He can do whatever he wants to his own men. Probably because he doesn’t want to get in trouble with Caesar,” she said snidely, and Silus raised both eyebrows. “Caesar gives orders to protect Followers of the Apocalypse and no other group.” 

“Wrong again.” He was impressed with her knowledge. “Caesar isn’t in charge of this outpost. You’re thinking of the Legate.”

She shivered despite the warm breeze and now he raised an eyebrow. “You sure seem familiar with the Legion for a settlement from Colorado.” 

“Put your hands up, you pathetic piece of waste,” she spat, and the girl’s friend stared in a mixture of awe and reverence. Silus sighed and raised his arms to humor the girl, but he couldn’t risk jeering, “I’ve charged entire tribes who all had guns, while unarmed, and it was they who feared me.” 

“Why did you save us, then?” the brunette asked curiously, still sweating but not lowering the gun. 

He shrugged, palms up. “We do have orders not to harm Followers.” 

“Is the Legate here?” the blond whispered, a concerned look threading her brows together, and Silus actually felt some sense of camaraderie with her at that moment. She feared the man. For whatever reason, she completely feared Graham. Only those who had survived his terrible deeds had anything left to feel, and all they felt was fear. Every Legionary felt it as well. Silus finally dropped his arms and stepped closer. 

“Listen,” he said, thinking of the women in town earlier, the women who walked freely; clean hair, smiling faces, no rags on their back. “I have no reason to lie to you. You’re right. We will take over the town soon. And while yes--Caesar gives orders not to harm Followers--those orders mean nothing when he’s in Arizona and we are here. I know that once Graham lays eyes on the camp he won’t spare anything down to the smallest bloatfly. If I were you, I’d leave now.” 

The two girls both lowered their weapons, not prepared for this news. He took the opportunity to reach forward and grab both guns, shouldering the shotgun and holstering the handgun. “And don’t tell anyone you’re going either. If you make this a big deal, if you try to exodus the entire camp, the Centurions will know and then you’re all dead. They’ll spot a train of ill-equipped morons parading out faster than you can say ‘radroach.’ If I were you, I’d leave tonight. Put as much distance between this place as you can.”

The blond’s jaw was dropped, but the brunette managed to swallow a lump in her throat and reply, “Why are you being so nice to us?” 

He shrugged, and tossed them a smirk that would remain hidden under the mask. 

“Because I like girls who fight back.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> double warning: contains cheesy philosophy and also sex

As he’d warned the girls, the Legion stormed the town days later, and as he’d predicted, Joshua Graham did not spare the Followers Camp. The townspeople fought better than the Legion had predicted, however, and soon Silus, Callum, and several other Decanii were called away as others stormed in their place. The Legion saw no point in wasting or wearying its men when they had plenty of firepower, and so the Centurion dipped his plumed head after commanding the bloodsoaked groups of men to go back to camp. They would send a scout if needed. 

The new, rested Legionaries plunged into the fun task of capture, pillage, murder, as Silus and the others headed away from the scene. Some like Callum protested, enjoying the slaughter, but Silus was just happy to go wash the blood out of his hair. Graham had already laid waste to the Followers and led the new band of slaves toward the camp; Silus parted just before entering the Legion’s stronghold and stared at the quiet mirror lake that stood against the base of a huge mountain. On one side it was flanked by large jagged cliffs, not unlike those he’d met the two females in days earlier. But on the side nearest Silus, it licked gently at the tall grass, gently fanning out around him. Sometimes he’d seen animals come to this lake and drink. 

Now he moved through the tall grass and enjoyed the quiet; the beating Legion drums were too far for him to hear the echo of, and even Graham was satiated as he led his men and their spoils back to a hearty camp. Other than the strange noises made in nature, it was quiet. Silus, almost in a trance, walked from deep grass to the soft mud of the water, and then out further until no grass touched him and he stood in knee deep water. A part of him almost wanted to keep walking, to just go, in full armor, until the water was over his head. It was sheer habit that made him pause and shrug out of his clothing, tossing them into the high grass and then stepping out of his boots to feel the icy water grip his lower legs in a vise. The dark crystal blue mixed with the blackish red of his victims’ blood and now Silus did walk forward until the sand turned to hard rock, until his waist was submerged, then he tossed his matted hair back and fell into the water, raking his hands through the black tendrils and feeling his hair fan out around him. 

He wasn’t afraid of water, actually enjoyed this water, but whenever he was under he always remembered that fateful day. Wrestling with his brother for his hand. The long dark hair of the trapped teenager hiding his face as his body went limp and tried to float, snagged by his crushed foot. While Sylvan screamed soundlessly and let the current carry himself away. Silus kicked, his legs finding footing again and he stood, shaking his now mostly-blood-free head and squinting as he splashed water on his face again. Despite his desire to be clean he reacted like a cat to having water on his face. 

“You’ve dirtied the water,” came a purr of a voice, and his eyes popped open. He turned as Aella slunk forward, dressed in a heavy purple robe. She held her pale hands at the edges of the cloak, eyeing the nearby rock where he’d thrown his armor. “And who will wash this for you? A slave?”

So much for the peace and quiet of the water. He squinted at her, until she stepped onto the flat rock and let the purple fabric cascade down to her feet. Silus had to admire the curve and reflections and the way the dim stormy light reflected from the water back onto her skin. She almost glowed. Now she tiptoed off the rock and toward him, the water growing higher until it was nearly to her chest when she stood beside Silus. He was rigid and muttered begrudgingly, “Are you spying on me?”

“I spy on everyone,” she reminded him, and then far more gracefully than he, leaned back and wet her own hair, keeping her face out of the water. Silus wondered why he hadn’t done that as she casually continued, “I was actually watching from the Priestess’s hill, waiting to see the Legate come in. You didn’t escape me.” 

“That concerned with Graham?” he asked wryly as she straightened up and pressed her still-warm chest to his, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. 

“You know I am,” she responded. “I have a lot of questions for you about the mission.” 

Silus sighed. “Can’t we just….not do this? Just for one fucking night? I’m sure you’re busy radioing all kinds of shit back to your contacts, but I’m tired. There’s also the fact that if I wanted to, I could hold you underwater and drown you right now.” The last sentence carried a note of gruff warning in it, and when the girl’s blue eyes drifted up away from his sculpted chest and into his own cold eyes, she knew that he was serious. 

“Fine,” she nodded, her wet red hair plastered against the sides of her face. It made her look, if possible, even more innocent. “One “fucking” night.” Now she walked daintily along the water, leaving Silus rather dumbfounded. It was that easy? Why didn’t he threaten her with death more often? The redhead paced for another moment and then said in an entirely different tone than the one she normally used while attempting (and succeeding) to blackmail or seduce him, “Have you ever mapped out this lake? Or seen it from the cliffside?”

“No,” he said flatly, attempting to comb his hair with his hands and eyeing her suspiciously. 

“The rock was on a fault-line,” she stated, pacing in a slightly deeper spot. The water now hid her breasts and Silus immediately felt sad about it. The girl was feeling around with her feet, and then glanced down. “It used to be a simple bowl, just a runoff of a glacier from that mountain.” They both eyed the huge looming stone behind the lake. “When the earthquake happened, I can only assume some by-product of the Great War and its nasty effects...part of the bowl collapsed. That’s why the cliffside is so near, and why the bottom is missing.”

His dark brows were lowered. “What?” he said, sounding and feeling just as stupid as a Legionary in a Women’s Lib class, but she simply motioned him forward with a pale arm. He walked over, studying her face in a new light and as he approached, he asked, “How do you know this?” 

“Geology lessons,” she answered strangely, as though this should be obvious, “Stand here.” She inched him forward, and then looked down into the water. When he peered down again, Silus was spooked by what he saw. 

He saw their feet, ghostly pale against dark grey rock, and perhaps six inches to the left, the gently-deepening river bed simply ended abruptly. A gaping hole of black water was in its place. They were essentially standing on a cliff. He instinctively withdrew, but when he looked at her with that familiar ‘what the fuck are you talking about this to me for’ face, she smiled. It wasn’t a seductive lip-biting smile or a fluttering eyelashes smile, just a simple smile, and he doubted his own sanity. 

“It reminds me of the Great War,” she said wistfully. Silus inched away from the dropoff and said tightly, “You talk as though you’d been there.” 

“I know enough from books and pictures, to know that I know absolutely nothing about how wonderful and terrible it was,” she stated. Now she turned and pointed back at the gentle slope they’d walked from. “There we were. Going along. Going slowly downhill.” She traced the path of the water, making a ripple with her dainty finger. “We went and went and then.” Now her hand disappeared beneath the water. “Everything disintegrated. It just ended, just like the riverbed.” In an oddly nostalgic tone she added, “It was just...gone.” 

“Is this a new way to advertise your blackmail?” he began, and she simply interrupted, “No.”   
“The thing is though...people are still here, Silus. People are just like they’ve always been. So the world is gone.”

“And we’re the shit that’s left over, I know this already,” he griped, not seeing the point to her lesson. It was something he’d decided himself long ago, perhaps before he’d even joined the Legion. Men were the only disease that the nukes hadn’t quite wiped out. Well, them and radroaches. 

She laughed and shook her head. The sky was fading fast, losing what little light it had offered through the clouds, but she still shone as she moved along the water. She was walking the cliffside. “The world’s gone and there are two types of people here. There’s you.” She playfully pushed his chest, toward the dropoff, and Silus stumbled out of the way, dodging backwards and moving away from that frightful black water. “The kind who rely on old ways and old ideas of safety. Those didn’t keep your world alive, did they?”

He had no answer when she turned away from him. He could see the crease in her back, a deep curve of her spine that he often traced when she was in his tent. Again Silus wished the water were lower, preferring a view of her ass from this direction. “Then there are the other types of people,” she finished, and without hesitation pushed forward from the rocky edge, swimming out into the deep unknown water. Silus could see her milky legs kicking in lazy circles as they dangled above hundreds of feet of nothingness. He stared skeptically, but she was still smiling. 

“It may look to you like I’m barely keeping my head above water,” That’s exactly what it looked like, “But if you think about it? I’m floating, Sylvan. Flying. That’s what we can do free of the old ways of the world.” 

The sun finally gave up, and the rumble of thunder sounded somewhere in the distance. Silus didn’t look up; his green eyes weren’t on Aella, or anything in particular. The mountain loomed over them, both protective and frightening, and she soundlessly treaded water as her red tendrils threaded out around her chin. She looked like a mermaid in the dark. “Are you ever going to come fly with me, Silus?” 

Without replying he turned, his shoulders heavy, and walked back toward the shore. She frolicked in the water like a happy animal and Silus gingerly sat near the flat rock, pulling a rag of toga away and wetting it, washing his chest and stomach while sitting in the shallower water. So this is what he got when he asked her to drop the veil. Silus was just as confused and annoyed with this side of Aella, the girl he at one time thought he would marry. He doubted she even knew if what she spouted, one way or the other, was genuine. 

And for the moment, as he scrubbed guts and blood from his arm with a rag, he felt sorry for her. She had obviously been brainwashed just as he had when the Legion took him. Whatever agency she worked for thought they had everything figured out, and unlike the Legion which thrived on the stark, unhappy truth, her life had been full of false hopes, of dreams of the stars. It was a common ailment that afflicted those born into an apocalyptic wasteland; like the religions of old, it promised a bright future, a way out of the predicament they all felt they didn’t deserve and were born into anyway. Silus had only gotten sick of smelling blood for the day and needed to wash off. She needed to feel important and though she were changing lives. And whatever independence she might have once had, whatever interesting woman she might have grown into, now she was a slave. 

The same as he was a slave to the Legion. The difference was in his awareness. 

This was what he mused over even when she came back from the rare break in sex-character, when she approached him with the full hopeful smile and sat on his lap, melting her now frigid lips into his neck and swirling her cool tongue over his earlobes as she spread her legs and gently rocked on his crotch. He would have betted against getting rock hard in icy cold water, but with her coaxing and whispering Latin in his ear it happened, and he was still rather dazed from his own thoughts when she rode him into a foggy exhaustion, the mist rising over the now-night water and hiding the pair from view, nothing but moans coming from the cold lake. 

And on the cliffs, patting a large white wolf he’d befriended while on a hunt, another Decanus crouched and brooded. He needed to hear more information about this agency before he could find them, and her sexual escapades were of little use. The wolf, bored with the lack of blood, trotted off into the fog like a ghost and left the blond alone on the clifftop. 

He was patient. There would be more information. She would share; she was comfortable with Silus. And when she did, Vulpes would hear it.


	14. Chapter 14

Silus retired early, and only after the moon was high in the chilly blue sky did Aella leave the water, gather her robe and dress herself, the soft silk sticking to her wet form and offering nothing to the imagination. She shook the garment and tugged at the pocket sewn into the inside. And now she circled around the lake and toward the cliffside, rising up the steep grassy hill and out of the fog to stand, pacing, on the top of the lookout. The lake beneath her was hidden from sight, wispy tendrils of smoke reflecting back toward the redhead and illuminating her as she paced. 

The pocket had contained a small radio device, used pre-War and scavenged by her organization for girls like her, the spies, to leak intelligence. It had a name--Greenfang--which she found ridiculous from a young age. Now she hooked it to her ear, brushing her hair forward, and crossed her arms. Aella paced slowly, shivering as she spoke in Greek. It was a language the Legion didn’t understand and had not been practiced among any larger Factions, so the organization found it appropriate to radio in. She told her communications relayer of the assimilation of the nearby settlement, of the destruction of the Followers of the Apocalypse camp. 

“Joshua Graham is an even more reckless and wasteful human than his employer,” the sharp, staticy voice chastised. “Has Silus told you the reason he does not heed this order while away?”

“I assume it has something to do with his rage,” she responded, her own dark blue eyes clouding over as she thought of the Legate. He was the most powerful man in the world. Even her own people couldn’t know the want and need she felt when she thought of him. They would consider her a madwoman, a femme fatale turned insane. She still wanted peace and order in the Wasteland. But she wanted Graham at her side as well. 

“We need an in-depth psychoanalysis of this Graham,” the man said in a bossy tone, the faint tapping of keys audible even over the static. Aella rubbed her bare arms. “You have yet to encrypt and send more information from the recent battle.” 

“I don’t have it yet,” she replied faintly, hearing her own accent when speaking the foreign language. She disliked it. It wasn’t pretty. 

“Why not? Is Silus withholding information? Have you threatened him thoroughly? If his family no longer interests him, hold something else over his head.” 

“He still cares for his family,” she correctly assumed. “I have just been….busy.” She thought of his abs, beautifully sculpted and glistening with water. “Silus does not hate the Legion nor cling to its ideals. He’s different than any of the other Legionaries.” 

“How quaint,” the superior jested humorlessly. “Maybe you can pack him up and bring him with you when you leave.” 

“He is loyal to Caesar,” she contradicted, ignoring the poke at her sentiments. Agents were never to get friendly with information subjects, of course. But Aella was disinterested in the entire conversation, at the moment. She was cold and tired, but couldn’t return to the Priestess tent until she had received more direction and orders. She had no information to give tonight, a failure. But a rare one. And even the best agents were allowed bad days. 

“Then you need to dig deeper. Make him feel a bond to you. Is he present during sex?”

“Not really,” she shrugged, blinking at the blindingly white moon. “I don’t think the real Silus is ever present, with neither me or his comrades.” 

“Then we need to play with psychology. Florence Nightingale effects. Make him your Knight in Shining Armor.” It was one of the most basic of romantic manipulations; play a damsel in distress, have a near death experience, get saved by someone who then begins to have romantic or needy feelings toward their rescue. It worked well with those who had low self-esteem; they saw their rescue as their own self-worth, and the attachments could be agonizing. 

With Silus, she would have no such luck. However, he would save her if something happened, only because she was the link to his family. Her luck with that was waning--she remembered the intensity with which he threatened to drown her earlier--so she should fake an accident sooner rather than later. The Greek in the speaker still hissed. “Do you have the resources you need for the situation?”

She stepped closer to the edge of the cliff, watching the rocks crumble and fall down into the mist below. “Oh yes,” she smirked. “Not to worry.”


	15. Chapter 15

Vaeh was getting more and more nervous as they rounded the edge of the mountain. The man’s boots she was wearing were far too large, and the slippery rocks only made her tripping footfalls echo and resonate loudly. The looming peak above them looked like Yao Guai heaven, and she kept checking around her. Andy was more methodical, and fit into the Legionary clothing better due to her height. Now she crouched, pistol withdrawn, and beckoned Vaeh closer. 

“Look...do you see it?”

At first the brunette didn’t, but as she leaned against the cool rock she saw the glittering, flickering lights in the distance. It was several miles away, on the opposite side of a large valley. Her heart thudded in her chest. To be so close to a Legion camp was insanity. And yet this was the closest way to the Highway 6 Pass, the unmanned road that led back to Utah. Back to hopefully, relative safety. They had stolen the men’s clothing, the Legionary robes of their attackers, and the stench of blood and sweat seeped onto both girls. Andy reassured Vaeh it was a good thing; the mongrels would be even further confused at the scent and leave them alone.

And so far it had worked. But they had never been closer to danger. Both girls had great senses of navigation thanks to years of Followers teachings, and their eyes moved from the warm, falsely welcoming glow of the settlement and toward the mountain ridge in front of them. They would be invisible in the night, but to make it out of the way by daybreak was imperative: they would stand out like a lakelurk at a dinner party with sunlight on the mountain and red cloth on their backs.

The girls scrambled between brush and rocks, trying to glue themselves to the edge of the slopes, when Vaeh froze. Andy paused to look at her, or rather the helmeted masked visage of her friend, and followed Vaeh’s terrified eyes. “There’s a man standing on that cliff.” 

“Duck!” whispered Andy, and they dove behind a sagebrush, gravel skittering around them. The man was oddly standing on a cliff that protruded on a gentle and quiet lake. He looked like a wolf contemplating the moon, and was no more than 100 feet from them at eye level. The girls gripped each other tightly, looking nothing like Legionaries as they held onto the other’s torsos for dear life. The last thing they needed was a Legion lookout.

But this man wore no red banner, or feathers, or plumes. He was dressed in jeans and a tactical vest, and his short brown hair was cropped in a conservative style. At the scuffling sounds, he almost lazily turned his head toward the mountain, looking rather disenchanted, as though a huge Yao Guai or Deathclaw would be an annoyance and an interruption to his thoughts rather than a life-threatening problem.

Both girls felt his eyes wander across the brush. Andy had the wild idea to shoot; she geared herself to do it. She knew precisely how and where. She wouldn’t say anything to Vaeh about it, she wouldn’t even prepare. Fate had given her one opportunity here, and she was going to take it and kill the bastard with a goddamn Legion gun. But as his head slowly turned, the sharp profile that had been shadowed in moonlight caught the full glow of the moon just as thunder pealed across the sky and rain began to fall. She was shocked at his face. How...young he looked. How clean shaven. How normal. No axe in his hands or blood on his mouth.

The gun was still in a viselike grip. The man’s eyes were crystalline and Vaeh swore that he actually peered through the brush and AT them, a strange ethereal expression woven on his face as though he knew they were hiding. He seemed almost inhuman. The pair remained frozen, not even a hair moving, and slowly the young-faced, crystal-eyed man turned his attention back toward the moon, his hand on his holster in such a relaxed position it seemed he slept while holding his gun. 

The rain picked up and suddenly Andy was jolted back into action, doubling her efforts at being quiet and scrabbling along the rocky mountainside like a blind goat, her adrenaline causing her to shake as she said nothing and led her friend away from the Legion.


	16. Chapter 16

Silus, Callum, and several other Decanii including Vulpes were training their men under the rare beating hot sun. The clouds had parted for the morning, for once, and thanks to the humidity of the landscape Silus could almost close his eyes and imagine he was back in Arizona. He could barely breathe as he suffered through the pushups with his face hidden by the mask; he paused long enough between loud snorts to shove the cloth downward into his armor before going back to pushups. 

It was mornings like this that he missed Caesar. Graham was only invigorated when blood was to be shed; Caesar enjoyed his men training and applauded those who did it well. It was rare praise, but praise Silus had gotten several times already. It only fueled his intent to be Praetorian. So he thought about the leader as he bellowed out Latin numerals to his men. 

Finishing his third set he spryly leapt to his feet, soaked in sweat and nodded to his men to begin the run. A track had been set up around the large slave pen; nothing was better entertainment for the slaves than to see a bunch of recruits dragging by, and the shame of being watched by the slaves was a great motivator for the men. But Silus himself didn’t follow--a rarity--because he was more interested in Vulpes. 

“Callum,” the young blond snapped, looking more tense than usual. “Brutus. Silus. Bring more wood for crosses.” 

“Don’t we have slaves for that?” Callum snarled, but nodded to his own men as well. Silus wiped his palms on his kilt as Vulpes explained, “I am crucifying one of my men along with the slaves.” 

Another Decanus, Brutus, stepped forward as Vulpes stormed away. In a humored tone the masked man explained to Silus and Callum, “Caught a Legionary trying to help some slaves escape. Things have been exciting down in the slave pen lately!”

Callum raised a wry eyebrow as Silus sneered, “I’m certain the happenings in my tent have it beat.” 

“We got a few new slaves,” Brutus added happily. “Captures.”

“Captures?” Callum’s voice was gruff, even more than normally as his face was hidden behind the bandanna. “From where? The Legate assimilated the settlement.” 

“I’m not sure, but get this...the rumor is they were found wearing Legionary clothes. I’ve heard they’re gorgeous. It was Centurion Lucius who found them while he was on patrol, and he’s not allowing them to be touched.” Brutus sighed wistfully. “They sound scrumptious, though.” 

Silus’s eyes nearly rolled out of his sockets and fell into the goggles he wore. Classic. This is why he didn’t help ingrates. Oh well, he shrugged to himself, they’d been fun for that minute or so they’d killed a Legionary. Now they were Lucius’s problem. He, least protestful of the group doing Vulpes’s bidding, shouldered several nearby large logs. “Where are we doing thi---”

And he turned, realizing Vulpes’s procession was headed toward the top of the hill. The cliff overlooking the lake. Even for Vulpes, that was pretty cruel. Silus snorted to himself. The sight of water right in front of the Legionary and slaves would drive them mad long before the birds arrived to peck at their eyes. Callum shouldered the other halves of Silus’s huge weight and Brutus, not to be outdone, slung one across his back to carry alone. 

It was already an interesting morning. 

____

 

Vulpes couldn’t contain his fury at the Legionary and stabbed the man a few times after he’d been strung up on the cross. One final stab left his jaw hanging rather pathetically lopsided and loose, and together Silus and Callum hoisted the crosses upward. Many Legionaries as well as slaves attended the event, the former by choice and the latter, forcibly, being family or friends to the crucified. Silus didn’t even blink as he noticed Aella and several of her fellow Priestesses and their tiny apprentices in their long robes, sashay by to enjoy the spectacle and of course, offer fruits and juice and songs. 

Silus was busy tying a crucifix together when Callum begin speaking of a new order Graham had given him that morning. There had been scout reports of a few tribes in the local mountains. They needed to be eradicated. Silus, unbelieving that tribals would want to face the snow and muck of the Colorado, raised his black eyebrows in surprise. They paused in their work to speak of the order, and a yelp and a gasp sounded from nearby.  
The Legionary barely turned his plumed head, but heard a Priestess scream, “Lady Aella! Someone help!” 

He noticed a pink robe was missing, but then Silus turned back to Callum, far more interested in the battle than whatever problem the redhead had caused for herself. Several Legionaries had already gone running toward the scene. 

“...And what day does he expect us to have our men at the top of that peak?” were his sarcastic, dry words.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this thing is getting entirely too long. lol

Aella had prepared for the sting of the water, expertly twisting her body as she fell so that her feet went under first; she kept her eyes open as a million tiny bubbles rushed to the surface in her absence. For a few violent moments she kept falling, but then slowed and lowered to a slow sink. She’d tied weighted jewels and bells to her ankles and made quite a show of it, explaining to the others that they were for dancing later….but their real purpose was to ensure that she sank, something she supplemented by layering far more robes than she would ever normally wear. Now they did their job, causing her to slowly dip further down. 

She kept her lips tightly sealed, held her breath and fluttered her eyelashes slowly as the soft bank of the riverbed rose up beside her. She was perhaps ten feet past the underwater cliff. Weeds waved gently to her from the edge, sending shadows of penetrating sunlight around the ghostly girl. She attempted to look around; the water was a gradient of clear crystal blue, then a deep cerulean, until somewhere below her pointed, bare toes, it turned into a seeping ink black. Other than the cliffside she had no reference point, but the rock was already twenty feet above her. 

Her red hair was flowing into her face, as were the plethora of pink and white robes. She slowly extended an arm to brush them away but it did no good, and she still sank. The surface of the water hadn’t been broken. Where was he? She didn’t dare panic yet, but began to slide her toe out of the first row of weights before accidentally inhaling. The girl choked, kicking the beads off and watching them slowly drift into the darkness. She’d opened her mouth and panic did set in; she screamed, watching the precious oxygen swirl around in bubbles that immediately left her to her fate, rising upward as she gave one more exhale and passed out, going as limp as the cloth drifting around her. 

She could no longer see the jagged rays of sunlight filtering through her window, and didn’t see when that perfect reflection was broken by a long tall shadow. Unweighted by any cumbersome Legion armor it dove down, both arms forward, and he easily swam the rest of the distance after the dive, his long legs kicking behind him. For a moment he, with his eyes open, marveled at the terrifying sight of the dying girl and her watery graveyard. Then, as though she were but a feather he grabbed her waist, turned, and with his eyes trained on the heavens and that coveted sun, he raked his other hand forward and made the slow climb to the surface, his brown hair for once falling forward and into his almost angelically pale eyes. 

 

_______________________________

 

Silus had descended the hill and was heading around the opposite shore of the lake when he heard the commotion, and peered from beside the rocky cliffside to see several Legionaries gathered around the water. Only then did he realize there were more running down the hill, followed by several Preistesses shouting in Latin. The redhead wasn’t among them. Still confused the Decanus turned back to the water to see a strange sight. 

Walking in a slow laborious pace was the Legate, head down, moving as fast as he could with the water slowing him down. Gathered in his arms was a mess of silken robes, two dainty white feet poking out from one side, and a shock of red spilling out the other side. Soon the Legate was above the waist-high water, soon the Legionaries parted sides as he waded into the brush, tossing the girl rather unceremoniously down on a large rock and bending over here. Silus watched, captivated, as the Legate lowered his ear toward her face, pushing up on her chin and scanning nothing with his bright blue eyes. He seemed concerned at hearing nothing, and then pressed his mouth down over the girl’s. 

It was almost surreal, a man who had just slain yet another settlement full of people, soaking wet and struggling to give life-saving breaths to a girl who Silus personally knew to be as big of a monster in her own way as he. Graham seemed incapable of resuscitating life; his position was to be a destroying angel, not an angel of salvation. At least that’s how it had always seemed. But then she coughed, choked up water, and stared up in wonder at him through her matted dark eyelashes and Joshua Graham smiled a toothy, relieved smile for one very long, frightening second, before standing and flinging water from his hair. 

In Latin, he pointed at his men to help the girl, and the horde of Priestesses rushed over. Several of them called to Silus, mistaking him for her courter or boyfriend or whatever lie she’d set up around the camp. His legs moved like lead as he tried to comprehend what had just happened. And beyond his shock at seeing the Legate acting as a lifesaver, he found himself wishing that Graham didn’t have mercy, or good lifesaving skills. 

It was begrudgingly that he helped the woman to her feet, and her dark blue eyes trailed past his shoulder where Graham was walking further from the crowd, eager to get away.


	18. Chapter 18

The Priestesses insisted he carry her to their tent, where women skilled with soothing remedies would help the girl with the shock of her fall. He felt like reminding the bitches they were in the Legion, but set his jaw and silently did as he was told. Once in the nauseatingly luxurious tent the women left him alone but insisted he sit and stay to await any word. Silus was happy to be out of the weather, especially since thunder had begun rumbling ominously in the distance. He wished the sun would stay. The sun reminded him of home, of Arizona, of Caesar. The Colorado was literally and figuratively raining bullshit on him. 

“She wishes to see you now, privately,” one of the older Priestesses sniffed, as Silus pulled the feathered helmet off his sweaty head and tossed his dark hair back. He found it pointless to argue so stepped passed the bejeweled woman and found his way through far too many hallways of drapes until he was ushered into a small room. It was lined with red and white silk, a small bed in the corner and not much else other than several books and a mirror placed in the corner. 

She was sitting on the bed, looking rather upset. This caught Silus off guard, as it was the first genuine emotion she’d shown. Her hair was still wet, and she patted the bed nervously as he entered, drawing the heavy curtain behind him closed. 

He ignored the invitation. “What do you want?” 

“Silus,” she said in a small voice. “Sit down.” 

Her tone was so tired that he actually complied, sitting stiffly and looking at her as though she were a time bomb. She put her hands in her lap, but then second-thoughted it and took one of his hands. The girl’s voice was even lower when she began to speak. 

“I know that I haven’t been...the best that I could be for you. The thing is, I use sex as a weapon, as females have done for thousands of years. It works on some people. On others it doesn’t. I know that nothing we’ve done together has meant anything at all to you. I can sense it and I admire it. You’re only going along with it to protect your family...which is just crazy to me.” She shrugged. “You haven’t seen them since you were ten. But you care that much. And since you do….I want to tell you this.”

His cautious stare carried her into the next sentences. “The tribals your family merged with have a settlement twenty or thirty miles from here. We’ve been monitoring them and offering assistance and killing any Legion scouts who wander too near. But we just got word that a scout captured a tribal child two mornings ago. They’ve questioned and killed the child. The Legion is planning to attack. We had to withdraw.”

“Withdraw?” Silus sneered. “Twenty miles?!” Now he stood, fuming, wanting terribly to either punch the girl in the head or tear down the canopy around them and strangle her to death with silken sheets. He began pacing, breathing hard like a large bull, and she sat nervously on the bed. 

“We can’t intervene,” she stated sadly. “I asked for assistance and it...was denied…”

“WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME THIS NOW?!” 

“I almost died this morning!” Her voice was shrill. “I understand now….things I didn’t understand before.” She was actually crying, Silus realized, but he was too enraged to even comment on how false and meaningless any emotion was now. She stuttered, “I want to help--I just don’t know--”

He rounded on her, his cape snapping around behind his back as he spun, and pointed a finger at her face. “If you had wanted to help, you miserable swine, you would have told me sooner that my family was in the same fucking state as I was.” 

The Legionary stormed out of the Priestess tent, haphazardly throwing his arms out and catching all sorts of furniture, paintings, a table of fruit, and a crude sculpture of a bull. Everything was tossed to the ground and he kicked the bench at the foyer over as he exited.


	19. Chapter 19

Silus stormed off with such fury he didn’t even notice the other decanus approaching the Priestess tent, the shorter and leaner man taking the same direction until he arrived at the personal room, entering and witnessing a sight rarer than rain in Arizona. Aella had misty, almost teary eyes. 

Vulpes pushed his feathered helmet off his head and pulled down his neck bandana. Before his sneer could form words, Aella said in a voice full of spite, “What do you want.” 

“The only thing you’re good for, obviously,” he chided, and after shaking his matted blond hair away from his eerie eyes, he took a seat beside her. “What can I say, even I appreciate the depravity of a whore sometimes.”

“I thought you knew I was interested in Silus,” she snapped warily, wrapping her arms around herself. Vulpes’s eyes seemed to linger on her breasts, tucked in their thin silk, but she was too agitated to notice his sly glance past her, toward the nightstand. 

“Interested in him, perhaps,” he said, forcing himself to reach forward and take a tendril of her rich red hair, curling it with his weathered fingers. “Not for the reasons a reputable woman would be interested. You’re a spy.” 

“You know nothing of how I feel, about Silus or anyone.” 

“I don’t care either. You are not to deny a Legionary pleasure, unless that Legionary stakes a claim on you. Silus has not. And neither has the Legate.” His dark smile told her she was not hiding her affliction with Graham well, and she stared in mild surprise as Vulpes nodded. “Oh, how vexed he would be if he found out his precious New Canaanite was from Kansas, not Utah. Was not even a believer in his old God.”

Now her lips pursed and the edges of them grew white. In defiance the robed girl tilted her neck and said, “When my agency frees the West I will see to it that your inhumanity, your ...psychotic nature, is revealed to everyone. You are the reason the Legion needs to be eradicated.”

To shut her up, he kissed her. Vulpes was not fond of intimacy, and had to stomach the feeling of kissing her again, couldn’t let loose and enjoy himself as he had before. Sex may have been her weapon, but just by reading her social cues, Vulpes knew she enjoyed it intensely, business or no business. He had to spend a horribly long period of time exploring her body and slowly tugging the robes off, burying his blond head first on her chest and then down between her legs, marveling at how soft the skin was and how sweet such a treacherous bitch could smell and taste before the moans and murmurs from Aella were no longer staged, or another part of routine. 

She was feeling lustful, pleasured. He lifted his head and held himself up with his arms, wiping his mouth with the back of his arm as her eyes, cloudy and unfocused, finally landed on his. For a moment they stared at each other, and Vulpes hastily sat up and tugged his own armor off. She fumbled to help him, and when they were both finally nude, she leaned forward to sit on his lap. The blond shook his head and tried to feign his own look of lust, placing his hands on her arms and guiding her to her knees on the floor, in front of him. 

“Not yet,” he said throatily and guided her by her red hair toward him. When she began to lick and tease Vulpes he tossed his own head back, gripping her hair and pushing his hips forward. Unlike the girl he hadn’t used the moment to escape whatever emotion was nagging at him--instead he continued to give feedback and signals of pleasure while eyeing the nightstand.  
The book that lay on the second shelf was likely a storage device; he would have to be deft to open and close it soundlessly. But pieces of jewelry and an old Book of Mormon lay atop them, and he noticed the book was askew. Vulpes was focused, despite his sweating, and his hand only left her head for several seconds as he slid it along the underside of the book. A small black object found its way into his hand, some piece of pre-War tech that was no bigger than a finger. He hastily returned to raking his fingers through her hair, still clutching the device between his palm and his thumb.

And he held it there successfully even after she’d spent several minutes working on him, and he finally relented and pushed her on the bed before entering her. And when he leaned over her head to seemingly bury his nose in her hair, he was eyeing the small device in his palm.


	20. Chapter 20

Silus was spending his precious free time outside in the gathering storm while Vulpes fucked his way around Aella’s tent. He was so angry he was boiling; the unnaturally cold air did not take the edge off as he helped the Legionaries and slaves haul lumber to build a large fort around their settlement. He didn’t know what to do. Couldn’t trust her. Even though she seemed full of sincerity and earnest, she’d lied to him. She kept him away from his family. She was of course using him, but the irony that over several peaks were his mother and sisters stung like a ferocious slap. 

And while Silus threw around logs and was too pissed to even bother yelling at the slaves, two slaves were sitting in the corner of the slave pen talking amongst themselves. Normally the guards would taunt them, or else gripe that they get to work being useful, but Lucius, the big gentle giant of Centurions, had taken a liking to them. “Like Snow White and Rose Red,” he’d said fondly, drawing curious looks from the girls, but perhaps luckily, the Legate had sent out Lucius and his men first to complete the first wave of tribal eradication in the Colorado mountains. So, fearing the early return and wrath of Lucius, they were safe.

The blond, already dirty beyond recognition from her night in the pen, was sullen and determined. She’d been repeating “We’re going to get out of here,” in some form all morning, but the brunette was quiet, preferring to observe the pens. Watching the pacing mongrels and looking forlornly at the mountains in the distance.

“It’s going to rain soon,” Andy assured her, “and when it storms, the Legion doesn’t function well. Most of them train in Arizona where it’s dry and hot all the time.”

Vaeh looked dubiously over, threading her dainty brows. Andy returned to sharpening her stick.

“If we can get some scraps of food to give to the dogs, they’ll ignore us when we leave. They’re only friendly with trainers and they use treats.” 

Vaeh sighed, and when Andy started to explain yet another Legion inner working, the brunette interrupted, “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

Andy glanced over, her green eyes dark. Vaeh exasperatedly pressed, “You just...showed up with the Followers one day. You speak Blackfoot, which is the first tribe the Legion took over. You know all this stuff about the Legion….were you captured?” 

Andy stood abruptly and Vaeh followed suit, scrambling to her feet despite being hungry and exhausted. “I know you don’t like to talk about it...but it’s the past! You don’t have to tell me everything, but--”

“I owe you nothing,” Andy said, pointing the stick at her friend. “I’m your friend now and that’s all that should matter.”

“It does matter. But.” Vaeh’s arms flopped at her sides. “Don’t you think it’s important to share this with me if we’re going to get out of here alive?”

“We’re going to get out of here alive,” Andy snapped, scratching the wood with her fingernails. “All you need to know is that these men are dangerous but stupid, arrogant and easily fooled. And they’re out here without their beloved leader to give them backbones.” Her green eyes slid to the side. “If you see a tall brown haired man who doesn’t wear red, but who everybody obeys, you run. Or stab him or bite him. Or something.” 

The other girl’s darker skin turned slightly green and she actually shivered in the pen, frightened of the ominous tone her usual friendly companion had changed to. This side of Andy was strange, but that last sentence was the strangest and most alarming. It almost sounded as though she spoke of a demon. 

She wanted to ask questions but instead relented. “All right.” 

____________________________________

 

It was very soon after this conversation that both girls turned, as the entire camp turned, and Silus dropped a heavy tree trunk onto a pile. The air had grown incredibly, unsettlingly still, and the Legate, out sitting at a table with a cup of decaf and a stack of papers, scout information about the mountain tribes, turned also. From the east ran two scouts, shouting at the top of their lungs. Their companion dog broke away from them and ran, whining, toward the nearby mountain. Though most Legionaries looked concerned and the Legate just looked annoyed and surprised, Silus was the one person who already knew the cause for their concern.

He broke into a run seconds later, finding the Centurion table and almost colliding with his own Centurion. Silus was already shouting order in Latin and several Centurions snapped to attention, before Gallus bellowed, “What are you standing around for? Listen to the boy!” Being called a boy after ranking as an officer didn’t even faze Silus. Callum paused on his way toward the tent with a confused stare, before Silus snapped out the one word only he knew the real weight of---

“Tornado!”

The scouts were busy untying the Brahmin, the Priestesses started emerging from their own tents and the children from the next-door wooden schoolhouse. Silus didn’t pause in the instructions, both Centurions and Decanii willing to listen to the one in their tribe with any experience. 

“Take no more than you need, one back pack, prioritize food and water, only load one wagon and choose the fastest slaves to carry it!”

“Not Brahmin?” Callum questioned, as Silus took off running toward the supply shed. 

“No,” he called, raising his voice over the howling wind that hit them suddenly. “They’ll run off. We need to make for the valley.”

A large shadow stepped in front of Silus, far more calm than the Legionaries, but with a look of doubt written across his pale face. 

“Why the valley?” he growled. “Is the mountain not safer?”

“Most people won’t make it up the mountain in time,” Silus said as it began to rain. A loud howling sound grew around them, and the Legate, Callum, and Silus all stared toward the east again. One of the black clouds was funneling, and it began to hail over the Legion camp as the large green-black cloud suddenly split into two, and then three funnels. They were just peaking over the hill the scouts had appeared from. 

The Legate grimaced and squinted as Silus explained, “There’s an old riverbed that’s narrow and deep in the valley, it’s easy running, and the tornados will jump right over it. If we go up the mountain it will tear us all down.”

“I hope you’re right,” Graham grumbled as though the tornado were a flat wheelbarrow tire and not a life threat. 

Callum took all he needed from the conversation and disappeared, leaving Silus to continue barking orders. Aella and Vulpes appeared at the entrance to the Priestess tent, both with their clothing and hair askew. The blond immediately bolted to assist his fellow officers, leaving the redhead confused until she saw the approaching funnels. The other Priestesses were already spilling forward, wrangling children and making toward the quickly-ranking lines of Legionaries who were fast packing and moving toward the valley to the west, while hail the size of golf balls pelted them all. Silus was troubled by the red cloud intertwined with the tornaodes. It seemed almost patriotic and Legion-devoted. He wondered what strange forces were at hand before the pang of missing his leader, of missing Caesar, made his stomach drop again. Graham was as frightening as a tornado. The decanus wished the balding dictator were closer. He might not even see him again, at this rate.

Graham-Tornado was ignoring the hoards of mass panic and instead headed to his own small cabin, which lay on a hill overlooking the slave pens. He had nothing of his own save his .45 and the axe he always wore on his back; his supplies were all private from the Legionaries. As he approached he ignored the smallest cylinder-storm cutting its way through the slave pen. The tornado threaded and tore up the ground, bouncing from the rocks to land along the chain-link fence. Men, women, children, and dogs all scattered as it spit out the fence. Graham’s boots skidded on the slope as he watched the chain crash down almost comically and ironically over his cabin, before the tornado itself made a leap up the hill and blew him backwards as it splintered through the middle, catching on the wood and spinning furiously. The tiny temporary home was demolished and his eyes darted around as he watched pieces of wood, fabric, weapons, all swirl in a macabre dance. The tornado changed course and darted down the hill away from him. Amid the hail and lightning Graham realized pieces of paper were floating down, almost in slow motion compared to the chaos around him. He turned dumbly toward the once-slave pen which was now devoid of slaves. A herd of wild Bighorner had entered the area, also running from the tornado, and now they trampled Legionaries and slaves alike, breaking the ranks the men were trying to achieve.

Graham saw a far larger tornado in the distance, this one three times as large as the others. He almost felt as though this would be his death, but as usual the ex-Mormon was not afraid. He grimaced at the scent of wet Bighorner and the stirred-up stench of the pen, but as the paper rained down on him one stuck to his boot, and now he knelt, plucking it up and holding the writing up to his face. The wind blew his hair wildly around his head as the Legate read aloud, “Yea, they shall not be beaten down by the storm at the last day; yea, neither shall they be harrowed up by the whirlwinds; but when the storm cometh they shall be gathered together in their place, that the storm cannot penetrate to them; yea, neither shall they be driven with fierce winds whithersoever the enemy listeth to carry them.” 

The tornado seemed to get angry at this, and roared so loudly he could barely hear. But then a voice caught on the wind and he lowered the paper to see one lone slave stuck in the area that contained the group before the fence had blown away. She wore the standard slave rag, her dirty blond head lowered as she struggled. Her foot was caught between two logs--two pieces of Graham’s house, he realized. 

He walked against the wind toward the girl, feeling strangely apocalyptic. The man unholstered his .45, held it up beside his face, and his finger wavered as he tried to get a good look at the female. His own hair in his eyes was hindering him, and as thunder pealed and the girl finally loosened her foot, Graham stopped short. The tornado was even closer now. The girl was being sucked toward it; her feet slid on the muddy ground and she scrambled to grab onto the log that trapped her.

Someone was calling to her, some other insane person who was not fleeing the raging tornado. He couldn’t make out any words, just the roar of wind and the faint sound of a human. Graham could see amid the herd of Bighorners and the now pouring rain, another slave perhaps fifteen feet away, her arm wrapped around a young sapling and her arm extended toward the blond.

He could feel the pull of the storm and gave in, walking toward the girl, his boots getting covered in mud. She hadn’t seen him yet, but now he let go of the leaf of his book and it actually was sucked forward toward the cyclone, smacking the girl in the face. She shook her head and the paper flew away, and now the blond scrambled to hold onto one remaining fencepost. Not hearing or seeing her would-be rescuer, she instead met eyes with Graham. 

He paused and lowered the gun, his blue eyes darting from the tornado to the blond girl. She was wrapped around the fencepost but every inch of her was being pulled backwards toward the monster tornado. Graham could see entire crucifixes, cattle, even trees swirling around within its black and red stomach. As lightning darted around them he extended his empty hand almost robotically. 

She was glaring, glaring despite everything and despite the storm, and now the tornado was so close the girl’s legs, despite her best efforts, were pulled backwards. She scrambled in the sliding mud to lock one ankle around the wood, focusing on glaring hatefully at the Legate while her hair stuck to her face and made vision almost impossible. His voice was audible even over the strong wind as he commanded, “Take my hand!” 

She was close enough to reach. Graham steadied himself, feeling the pull drag his boot heels several inches closer. The girl said nothing, choosing only to glare silently as she ignored his command. He shook his hand and leaned at the waist, closer than ever. “Goddammit, TAKE MY HAND,” he roared, and no sooner had he done so than the girl resolutely let go of the fencepost, giving him one final stare of hatred and contempt before she was pulled away, swallowed by the blackness of the tornado. 

He heard a scream on the air from nearby, and the Legate spun, digging his heels into the ground for traction and beginning to run. He could see the other slave out of the corner of his eye, now choosing to run as he did, but she seemed to fear him and took another direction. The man’s long legs carried him away from the monster behind him and through the broken village ahead of the tornadoes.


	21. Chapter 21

Silus’s predictions saved a countless number of people, from slaves to Legionaries. They hid frightened in the trench, huddled among each other and forgetting for the time being, their aversion to one another while the tornadoes--six in total, by the end of the storm--skipped over the trench created by the riverbed. Many of the dogs had the sense to stay close to their pack and the entire lot smelled of wet dog and wet slave. After the tornadoes passed the rain came down even harder, so thick it was in sheets.

He left damage control to the Centurions and clambered out of the smelly safehole to stand on a ledge and attempt a glimpse at camp. They were perhaps half a mile away, but Legion belongings were now scattered, broken, throughout the field. Silus stared glumly through the drowning rain at the trail of destruction and the torn-up earth, full of remembrance of his childhood, when an unwanted form floated in front of him.

She was barely visible through all the rain and all the better. He wouldn’t admit even to himself that the girl was beautiful anymore. Her eyelashes were matted with rain. 

“You saved everyone here,” she said loudly, attempting to be heard over the thunder and wind. “You….you did really well.” 

His voice was lower. “Get away from me.” 

“Silus,” she began, and her tiny and delicate arms now wrapped around him in what was possibly the post-War’s most awkward hug, “Sylvan. I know we don’t understand each other. I know at times we’ve hated each other…...but I wouldn’t trade the time we had together. I…” her voice was more timid. She was either breaking, or maturing. He didn’t really give a fuck which one it was.

“In a different world, maybe,” she began, but stopped again. He squinted against the rain, his arms at his side as she clung to him and shouted into his chest. 

“I am lucky to know you. I would never say this about any Legionary but I……”

He knew the word ‘love’ was knocking somewhere around in her head, but she chose, “....respect you.” 

Silus didn’t move, blinking when he saw lightning crash against a nearby tree and wishing it had chose Aella. The girl backed away from him, looking expectantly at him as though he owed her a reply, and the decanus found himself speaking words he didn’t know he had inside of him, words he drawled over the wind in a voice far more passionate than hers. 

“I wish I had never met you. Or seen you. I would give anything to have you burned at the stake like the witch you are. Or crucified like a profligate. Anything, an auto-doc or chem overdose to void my memory of the plague of your existence. Your loyalty is empty, your fight is meaningless. You’re more shallow than the water barrels the Brahmin drink from, and half as useful. One day someone will ruin your life the way you ruined mine. It won’t be me, Aella, because I just don’t fucking care enough to bother with you.” 

And he wrenched himself away from her pleading arms and eyes to finish with, “I have a tribe who needs my help.” One final glare left her standing in the rain shivering while the decanus moved through wreckage to find his century.


	22. Chapter 22

Graham, perhaps insanely or wisely, Silus wasn’t sure, ordered more men to follow Lucius up the peaks. He was dreading the order, but some still-hopeful part of the decanus willed his family to have left the tribes in the mountains already. Or wilder still, he dreamed of freeing them. Graham stayed behind to ensure a safe, if uncomfortable, place for the remaining Legion, but sent his strongest centuries--Silus’s included--to fight the tribes. 

No one knew why the tornadoes came, or where they came from, but Silus had his suspects. If Aella’s tribe was as advanced as she boasted, there was no reason they couldn’t harness pre-War weather devices and cause the unnatural storms. Tornadoes in their natural state did not have a red cloudy glow. But no Legionary knew this, none ever having seen the destructive creations other than the sole survivor of the Dark Cloud Tribe, Silus himself. He kept his mouth shut. 

And he hoped that while he and his men ascended the mountain, Yao Guai tore apart every last fucking Priestess in the ruin of their new home. 

Most of the Legionaries were excited, both from the fury of the storm as well as impending battle. Their enthusiasm was not even muted by the snow they met on the third day. Silus was one of the very few who didn’t wrap in furs, muttering instead about how he would gladly freeze if it meant keeping matted wet dog fur off his skin. His nerves kept him awake, his coldness kept him focused on the fight. For days they battled weather and then finally their first tribe. 

Silus was so numb to the battle that he barely reacted when his Centurion’s head exploded inside the metal helmet. He was glad to let Callum, who was as bloodthirsty as ever, lead the men forward and into an unlikely victory. The Decanus swore he saw a look of almost remorse on his companion’s face as he watched him execute a young boy, but then again Silus wasn’t aware of anything on the mountaintop. Only the lingering fear of finding his family. 

On the eve of the first victory, Callum was promoted to Centurion and the only smile Silus gave was when Aurelius and Lucius gave an informal, fireside induction to the cheers and claps of the rest of the men. Things were jolly enough until Graham, covered in snowy fur and glowering like a ghostly Yao Guai, showed up with his entourage and the livelihood died down. Silus nodded his congratulations to Callum before solemnly retreating to the pathetic, hole-riddled tent he shared with the rest of his men, since resources were so sparse. 

He didn’t sleep that night. He lay in bed as the other Legionaries moved around him, listening to Graham yell commands amid the whistling wind of the mountaintops. It was early dawn when the order came through and Silus heard it despite not being on duty for several more hours. Thanks to diligent scouts, another tribe had been located in the mountains, a refugee camp that was full of disease and would cost the Legion no casualty. This was fantastic news to most, as the former day’s battle had left many wounded and tired, and some men had already roasted a few bits of Painted Rock Tribe over the fire to taste. 

Silus was forcing himself to step into icy wet boots when a drumbeat began, and suddenly shots were fired throughout the camp. The tribe had descended upon them, but by the time he stumbled over his men and out of the tent into the grey morning air, groggily pulling out his shotgun and firing at anyone who wasn’t wearing red. Silus had been pushed too far mentally, but he noticed the long dark hair and olive skin of the tribals.

Their aversion to snow, and their uselessness with weapons.

The refugee camp had been his old tribe.


	23. Chapter 23

And now as he discarded the empty gun for a machete, stabbing and swinging over and over, he began to understand the situation. The guards had been disposed of during the night, and the entire camp surrounded with some animal fat or oil. The tribals had lit a huge fire around the boundaries of camp, and the true warriors were outside the circle, firing arrow after arrow into the camp. 

Callum and Aurelius took their men to opposing sides and ordered shields to assist Legionaries forward, to begin shoveling snow on the stubborn oil fires. It was slow going, and those unlucky enough to get near the border were shot down. Silus scrapped a shield from a fallen Legionary and moved it in front of his face, hearing an arrow thud dully on the other side of it. 

He heard a loud cry, an insane gargling sound and fell forward instinctively as another arrow flew past him; the cry had come from Callum, who now had an arror protruding from his thigh, the one place his new Centurion armor left unprotected. Silus glanced around, judging his position and whether he could back up the other, but just as he sprinted forward Callum gave a rather bloodcurdling roar and astonishingly, charged the archer who had fired, from the other side of the wall of fire. 

Silus and many others, both tribal and Legion, could only stare as the hulking man leapt through six feet of flames and impaled an archer, mowing down others in his path and showing no sign of being injured. The Legate saw this and turned, his blue eyes aflame, then ordered in Latin for his own men to follow the Centurion. When they hesitated, Graham’s face burned so ferociously most of them opted for death by flame and arrow rather than death by Malpais Legate, and just as Silus picked up another discarded shotgun, bending and hurriedly loading several rounds, Graham caught an arrow midair and snapped it in half with one hand, raising his 1911 and firing a perfect headshot out into the flames. The tribal warriors caught in the circle jumped the tall man, and for a moment he looked like a bear flinging off a pack of wolves as he twisted and turned. 

Silus again rose to follow Callum, his stomach turning at the thought of firing on his tribe. He was trained to follow the red plumes, however, and Silus had fought beside Callum for years. They were loyal to each other. The tribals ganged up on the Centurion, arrows bouncing off his metal armor, and Silus scrambled for a bow and spare arrows. It was rare he used a bow, but now he fired from the foraged quiver and stuck down two, three, four Dark Clouds. He tossed the bow aside to favor his machete and jump through the gauntlet. But again the black-haired Decanus was delayed; through the flame toward him came another warrior, though she was not jumping with a sense of urgency but rather a concerned run. Silus’s face mask was off and he turned, wide-eyed, at the sight of his mother coming toward him with her arms outstretched. 

Vulpes was behind her, had stared wide-eyed as Joshua Graham’s eyes lighted on the woman in confusion. He was still battling a slew of tribals, but he as well as other Legionaries stared at the loving and desperate way she approached Silus. Vulpes saw the pained look on his co-decanus’s face and hesitated no longer, pulling the shotgun from his hip and squeezing the trigger. He aimed for the upper spine, ensuring quick and painless death. Not something he usually cared about, but he couldn’t risk Silus breaking down due to watching his mother die slowly. 

The blond knew that Silus would misinterpret this act of saving face. Graham and the others had no lingering interest in the dead woman, who had tripped and fallen prone in the snow. And though the blatant stare of hatred was obvious on Silus’s face, no one caught it but Vulpes, who hastily pumped another round into the chamber of the shotgun and stepped forward, firing at another archer who was aiming at the still-in-shock brunette.

He turned slowly away from the scene of the turquoise robes, the ebony hair on the white snow, dark red blood fanning out around the woman. Silus couldn’t even muster up thoughts of hate for Aella, or anger at Vulpes. He was simply stunned. The shield was dropped and had it not been for the loud call from the top of the mountain, Silus likely would have been shot and killed. But a commotion stirred; from the east came a new convoy, a mass of well-dressed and hearty Legionaries who descended on the remaining tribals with fresh fury, tossing icy blankets over the oil fires for access to the camp and the denizens within. The battle was over in moments thanks to the large blur of red, but Silus was not cheering with the rest of his men, or smearing blood on his face and howling like Callum and his men. The Legate’s look of disgust as he barked for the Legionaries to kill the wounded and stop stalling fell deaf onto Silus’s ears, and he also didn’t see Lucius heartily take the arm of the head of the Praetorian Guard. 

“It’s a miracle you’ve come”

“Hail Caesar!”

“We were overwhelmed by snow”

“He wanted to see New Milan…”

“....we met a scout three days out who informed us of the disaster”

“...bad omens”

 

Silus heard none of it and as he faltered, walking slowly away from the circle, a man wrapped in red and black fur broke ranks and strode toward him. The man ignored the lush and lavish praises of the men around him and shooed away his guards. Silus didn’t see the shadow as he fell to one knee, but the man astonishingly moved to toss a warm blanket of combed Bighorner fur around the young Decanus’s shoudlers. Silus realized how cold he was and shivered, his face screwing up in a pained grimace as the newcomer knelt and wordlessly pulled his prodigy toward his chest. Silus’s tears were lost in the thick black fur of the man’s chest armor. 

In his usual pleasant, amiable voice Caesar reassured him, “I saw you firing arrows for your Centurion. Promoted not a day ago and still loyal. Even when your old tribe shows up.”

Silus could have passed out from shock, but he said nothing, wondering if he might puke from shock. Caesar squeezed his shoulder and passed him a handgun. “It’s over now,” the dictator announced comfortingly, and then rose, readying himself for the impromptu speech he was prepared to give his men. They rose to look upon him, from unimpressed, disgruntled Graham to loyal and doting Vulpes. Silus could barely stand, only bothered to keep his eyes downcast at the snow, which was littered with red, as Caesar spoke of the challenges and triumphs of his men and their strong spirits. Their loyalty to the Legion.


	24. Chapter 24

Caesar’s pondering silence and Graham’s brooding one was broken as Lucius approached, looking happy to be near the large fire. He bowed stiffly at the two Legion leaders, and then said in his soft voice, so unbefitting a Centurion, “My Lord….shall I call down Silus to speak?”

Graham looked sharply away from the fire. In an angry voice he snapped, “About what?”

Apparently knowing his Centurion’s thoughts better than the Legate did Edward explained, “Silus’s tribe grew up in a particularly wretched part of Kansas, where tornadoes were common even before the Great War. He’s the best man here equipped to teach us about them.”

Graham grunted and moved his eyes back to the fire, but Caesar actually stood, shrugging the large black fur robe around himself and patting Lucius on the arm. “Thanks but no thanks...I think I’ll go have a chat with him myself.” 

“As you wish,” Lucius relented. “He and Callum have taken the third floor quarters.” 

“What about...surely there’s more room on the third floor for others?” Caesar questioned, tilting his sharp eyebrow. 

“The men have taken rooms by century, My Lord,” Lucius explained in a small voice. “Callum and Silus were the only decanii in their century to be taken by their Centurion to battle. They...lost their men.” 

“I see,” Caesar said, stepping past his Head Centurion. “Then hopefully, three won’t be a crowd.” 

Callum and Silus were impressed by the wood burning heater in the ski resort rooms, as well as thankful for having their own actual, large beds. The room was cold, and when they entered a sheen of frost covered everything. But now that they’d broken down a few nightstands for kindling and started a fire in the wood stove, the room was a manageable temperature. Both men were too tired, too lost in their own thoughts, to say much as they labored out of their armor with no slaves to help. Callum was peering forlornly into the Centurion helmet and Silus was repairing his boots when the knock sounded, and without awaiting an answer, Caesar slid into the room.

“Ah, my two toothiest warriors,” he stated, and then moved toward one of the beds, the one that Silus sat on, in his still-wet toga. Callum’s bed was on the adjoining wall and now the Centurion looked up and stiffened, prepared to rise, but Caesar waved the formality away. “No need for customs...I wondered if we could talk,” he said in a tone that was nothing but fatherly. Again he did not await an invitation but sat comfortably on the bed next to Silus, who stared at him apprehensively. 

The dictator sighed, his breath fogging around him as the two younger men stared in awe, and then he clapped his hands together formally. “Family…..” he began. “Family is important. I’m not talking about the family of the Legion. I mean blood family.” Both Callum and Silus did not respond, other than blinking at the strangeness of the intimate conversation. “Whether you love them or hate them….you can easily spend your life missing them. Hoping to see them again. Or replacing them. Even if family is harmful to us, we feel a loss when they are not around, or when they damage us. A loss that’s entirely different than any other.” 

Callum had a very dazed look on his face but Silus was now staring stonily at the floor. To Callum, Caesar explained, “Silus’s blood family were part of the refugee camp we slaughtered today.” The Centurion’s eyes widened and he cut a glance at Silus, who was now squinting at a nail on the floor, and then the other stared again at Caesar.

“I...did not know.” Sympathy was not expected from any of the men to any of the men, especially officers, but even Callum looked remorseful for a few seconds. Silus finally spoke up in a muted tone, “It’s fine.”

“I say this because I watched you choose your family of the Legion over your family from Kansas. That...is what I expect of my officers. Of my Praetorians.” Now Silus stared at the dictator in awe. He wasn’t even aware that Caesar knew of his ambition, but the older man smiled wisely at the brunette’s look of shock. “Now that we’ve got that straightened out...I have a question for you.”

Silus gulped, trying to hide his excitement. “Yes...sir.”

“It’s about the tornadoes. The way Graham described them to me, they seemed to come out of nowhere, to hit perfectly, to have a strange glow about them, to leave suddenly after destroying the entire camp. I want your opinion. Were they natural?”

Callum, now perturbed, stared at Silus. The dark-haired Decanus’ green eyes searched the room for a moment as he recalled all the tornadoes of his youth, as he thought of Aella’s organization and her talks of science. Brochures he read as a child about harnessing the energy of nature. More was put together in his mind, but he was not ready to vocalize it all yet. He realized that he probably no longer had a choice.

After a pregnant pause, he stated firmly, “No.”

“Why do you not think so?”  
“There were too many of them that appeared at once. Tornadoes...they take time. Especially near mountains like that. Once they formed, their sizes were off as well. Natural tornadoes rarely reach that large of a diameter. One of those, the one that cut into the Legate’s camp...it was…” he shook his head in disbelief. “Bigger than any I’ve seen. They also moved too near the mountain, and then stopped just after the camp was destroyed. They didn’t go far into the valley. Not as far as it would have normally taken...the bigger the size, the longer they last. And they had some...weird red cloud in them.”

“That is not normal for twisters either?” Caesar seemed intrigued the most by this.

“Not at all. I think it was a toxic gas, when the tornadoes died down the gas lingered and it burned some of the trees by the forest. There were men there and they began coughing, saying their eyes were stinging. The cloud seemed to evaporate eventually, but..” Silus shrugged. “It wasn’t like anything I ever witnessed.”

“Then, you might know my next question,” Caesar said with a hint of humor. “Do you know who is responsible? Or perhaps what is responsible?”

“I think I do,” Silus admitted, thinking quickly. He pieced together the best lie that he could on the spot, unsure if Caesar or even Callum would buy it. Both men were staring at him intently as he stuttered his way through, “I heard a girl..a...slave. She was talking to another two about working for some organization. That she let herself get captured by the Legion. And that they used..some sort of technology. They’re in Kansas, but--” at least this part was true, “I’ve never heard of nor encountered them.”

Caesar was taken aback but spoke calmly. “What happened then?”

“I took them from the pen and tried to question her further, but she...was stubborn.” He saw the redhead in his mind’s eye. “She wouldn’t tell me anything else. I wasn’t certain who to tell, but she threatened my family so I.”  
Silus cringed as he realized that even with masking the truth, he was almost certain to be severely punished, possibly crucified. But what did any of that matter now? “She knew that my tribe was alive, though she didn’t say where. I was so angry I ...put her on a cross.” 

Callum sighed, shaking his head. With capturing a spy the only option was to take them to an officer or preferably a Frumentarius, which the Colorado camp had precious few of, and they were rarely around. Still, Caesar was likely to not accept this explanation. To both men’s surprise, he nodded as though he understood Silus’s rage, and said in a deliberate tone, “I suppose there is no trace of her left, since the tornadoes--”

Silus nodded hastily and guiltily. Caesar was not deterred. “Well. In that case. What would we be looking for if we were to hunt down this organization? What do you know or believe of it?”

“I don’t think they’re very far,” Silus admitted, “At most several weeks’ travel. Kansas is not far from the border and settlements are wide and far apart. Since she sounded so enamored with technology I would bet Brotherhood of Steel would know, or have some information. It seems like a weather control station of some sort is involved.” 

“Do you know any settlements along the way that would fit that criteria---Brotherhood of Steel, technology, relatively nearby, pre-War military base or something similar?”

“I do,” Callum said in a voice that surprised everyone, even himself. He stuttered at the next part, “It was...in one of the ...reports.”  
“Go on,” Caesar said, furrowing his brow. Callum gulped and Silus stared at him, realizing he was not the only one with a secret. Still he said nothing as the Centurion explained, “Cheyenne mountain. It’s a settlement built in an old pre-War city, and they have some sort of Aerospace center. The military base had their own vault commissioned. The Brotherhood of Steel opened the vault years ago and converted most of the descendants of the soldiers. It’s not in Kansas though.”

“Well where is it?” Caesar was almost giddy. 

“It’s close,” Callum nodded. “Maybe three or four days from here.”

The mere thought that the girl and her treacherous organization were possibly closer than he could imagine drove Silus into an immediate rage that he didn’t think he would be able to contain. His nostrils flared as Caesar said something now, his voice in a dull roar as he spoke to Callum. Over several minutes this went on, and Silus closed his eyes until he no longer had to mask his deep breaths or clenched fists. Just as he calmed himself he heard the voices echo, Caesar pleasantly saying, “....have a few minutes alone with Silus? I need to speak to him. If you would, go inform Lucius and the Legate of our conversation and if possible find a map.”


	25. Chapter 25

As Callum exited the warm room and the door clicked closed, Silus turned, his anger gone and his fear back in full force. Caesar stood, smiled down at him for a moment, and then backhanded the Decanus.

When Silus reeled backwards on the bed and put his hand to his now busted lip, Caesar put his arms at his waist. The furs made him seem larger than life, not some sweet charming leader but a brute. He glared at Silus, but his tone was still conversational when he asked, “Do you think I’m stupid? Do you take me for a fool? You didn’t take that slave to the Legate because you were protecting her. If she even was a slave, which I doubt. I also doubt she’s dead. You were on some hero mission to salvage your tribe, weren’t you?”

When Silus opened his mouth, no sound came out, and he felt another blow to his head as Caesar roared, “WEREN’T YOU?” He yanked the black hair away from Silus’s face and twisted the man’s head back. “Answer me, you pathetic worm,” he sneered, and Silus was so shocked he stuttered out, “Y...yes.” 

This seemed to anger Edward further; he let go of Silus’s hair, paced the wooden floor. “After all I’ve done for you. I took you away from that miserable group. When I choose what tribes become Legion and what tribes are assimilated by the Legion I do it on one term, and that’s strength. Where were you when I found you? Alive. Barely alive. Where was your family? COWERING. Cowering in a bunch of underground tunnels. I gave you a chance, I saved your life, I spared you on the HOPE that you were strong.” 

He wrenched Silus’s face forward again, this time grabbing him by the throat, and withdrawing a small knife from somewhere on his armor. He brandished the knife and Silus shrank away from it but Caesar held his grip. “Do you know something, Decanus.” The last word was a sneer. “You are nothing special. None of you. This is no family. I am not your father. You are not my prodigy. Get the thought out of your sentimental guts or I will pull them out of you and feed them to the dogs.” He shook the knife, getting it closer to Silus’s face. “Don’t you see that X on your shoulderpad? Legionary armor is always painted with an X. Just like the slave rags. It means you’re a slave. MY slave. You do as I ask. If I will it you kill your mother. Your father. Yourself. It seems you’ve forgotten that lately. Maybe you need a reminder.”

Silus nearly cried out but then choked, stiffening as he felt the bite of the blade in a rather unexpected place; his bare shoulder. First one long, deep cut, and then another. Silus realized Caesar was marking him with an X. He could only gasp with pain as the dictator took two steps back, rage still in his eyes, and pocketed the knife. “Any other toe out of line, you pathetic excuse of a warrior...and I’ll let the Legate find out of your indiscretion.” 

He stormed out, leaving Silus to wipe blood from his lip, and then stare at the long trail of blood running down his own arm.


	26. Chapter 26

He needed something to do, and had high hopes for a water heater in the large lodge. Painfully Silus re-dressed and put on his gear in case that mission was not fruitful and he had to go downstairs to forage for dinner instead. 

However he had better luck than with Caesar; he didn’t have to walk far before finding a large communal bathroom, with a closet full of junk inside. The place had been largely untouched, he realized before bending down and attempting to read the water heater instructions. If he could light the pilot light, there might be some chance of heating the water. One of the men downstairs had already succeeded in getting water flow into the building; the preWar workers were smart enough to drain the pipes in winter to prevent bursting. And while the other men might have enjoyed showing off by taking cold showers, Silus loved no luxury more than a short lukewarm bath. 

He took the cover from the water heater, and heard a scuffle. Thinking it might have been a rat or radroach he flicked his lighter and was startled when he saw poking from the shadows, a face. Silus doubled back, and as the face scurried back in fear, he paused, holding his lighter beside him as he exclaimed, “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Please don’t hurt me!” she began in a hushed voice, “Don’t--I was just----wait, what do you mean, you? You don’t know me!” The closet was tiny to begin with, but the teenager was petite. Silus rolled his eyes behind his goggles and grabbed her arm, dragging her out. The girl began to kick but he clapped a hand over her mouth before she could scream. 

“Keep your mouth shut unless you want to participate in a gang rape of about fifty men, all on you at once.” The cynical words cause her to pause, and he finally let go of her, before turning to the door and locking it. In the dim, snow-lit room he pulled his bandana down, so she could see his mouth and nose. The girl stared, not understanding, but finally tilted her head. “I do know you. You’re the man from the rocks.”

“That’s me,” he said lamely. “What the hell’s wrong with you? You get lucky enough to escape via tornado and now you’re here camping out with the same guys who caught you?”

“I was here before you,” she admitted in a sullen and confused voice. “I got lost on my way back to Utah and took the wrong road. Once I was far enough in the mountains I saw a roadsign for this place and knew it would be safer to keep going than turn back and risk a Legion camp. Or wolves in the dark. I’ve been foraging here until….”

She looked around worriedly. “Until now.”

He snorted. “Your luck is worse than mine. Maybe.”

Now the young girl turned milky white, ghostly. She was shivering. “Please, please...offer me the same kindness you did before….let me go.” 

“Kindness!” he chuffed. As an afterthought he added, “Where’s your friend? The bitchy one.” 

The girl’s eyes welled with tears. “She….we lost each other in the storm.”

“So she had worse luck than either of us,” he commented.

“It wasn’t luck. She….she let go suddenly, when the Legate came toward her.” The black-haired girl shook her head softly, her eyes clouded in remembrance of the event. “It was...so strange. I don’t know why she hates him so much. I mean...he’s frightening, but she seemed to hold a special, deep hatred.”

“Because he’s evil as fuck and twice as strong, fast, and crazy as any supermutant in the Wasteland.”

She returned to her pleas. “Please let me go. I want nothing more to do with this place. Or your tribe. I just want to get home.”

Silus thought of Caesar’s words. He hesitated. He detested being the moral compass of a tribe of rapists, but even more than that, he hated being told what to do. He hated being told he was a slave. The slashes on his arms were still quietly soaking through his red armor. He knew the reason Caesar punished those who weren’t forthcoming with information. Who fraternized with outsiders, with women. And despite all that, it gave Silus some satisfaction to know he was able to make the choice. The choice to lie about Aella, the choice to warn two young girls about the demise of their camp. And almost immediately after his warning, he was facing another choice.

“Get back in the closet and hide. I’ll go back to my room and gather my extra gear and bring it here and put it in the closet for you. I’m just going to open the door and put the clothes on the counter. You’ll have a facemask and hood so no one will know who you are. Then you’ll have to walk out of here. Guards are at the northeast and southeast only; the changing of the guard will happen at midnight.”

As she began to profusely thank him, Silus dismissed her and turned to open the door as she tiptoed back into the closet; he felt oddly satisfied with himself as he closed the door behind him.


	27. Chapter 27

Aella gasped as the blindfold came off and she struggled to focus; she was still tied with her hands behind her back, and she was still in stealth gear. She’d been forced into it by Vulpes, after he showed her the small chip he’d taken from her Priestess table earlier today. He’d made the lone trek back down to the destroyed camp while the other Legionaries headed in the opposite direction, toward the snow lodge. Since the battles had been so long and bloody no one noticed the missing body yet. The Legionary wore the tight-fitting stealth armor as well, and he now smugly faced her while she sat.

“Know where you are?” he asked in a chilling tone, and she looked around. Tin walls. Rust. Junk. War memorabilia. 

“How...how did we travel...what was that thing you did?”

He held up some futuristic-looking ray gun. “I overheard your radio friends talking about the location of a transport device. Seems they planted one in an underground box outside our camp in case you needed a quick escape.”

The redhead’s long eyelashes draped downward as she closed her eyes. Vulpes spun on his heel and eyed the gun-device while remarking, “But, you didn’t answer my question. I’ll tell you where we are. We are at a military outpost twenty miles away from Fort Carson. Which I believe is where your headquarters lies. As well as the large refugee camp. And it’s all protected and assisted by the generous Brotherhood of Steel. Am I wrong?”

He turned, his blond hair falling into his eyes as she began to struggle at the ropes. “What are you doing? What are you going to do?”

“I came here on my own as soon as I found this device,” he said, undeterred, as he paced. “Curious place to transport. There is a bunker. Weapon stocks. Food. But….this place is also dangerous.”

She said nothing but her lips were pressed so closely together a thin white line formed around them. He walked to a panel of security monitors. On them she could see various locations within the bunker, and the street cameras that pointed at Fort Carson, the mecca of Colorado tech and the home she’d missed for years. “For one,” Vulpes commented, pushing a panel and changing the largest monitor to another lab, “Did you know there’s a weather station down here? PreWar technology that even the Chinese would have loved.” His icy eyes glittered as he stared at the large, green-tinted monitor. “Lightning. Storms. Tornadoes. Hurricanes. And some….Big Mountain tech I believe? Some cloud. Interesting. Dangerous.”

“Just kill me if you’re going to kill me,” she snapped. He walked forward, holstering the transporter, and in his black suit he leered over her, putting his palms on either arm of her chair. “The Legion despises technology. It’s lazy. It is indulgent. It is wasteful. Do you know what the most wasteful invention is?”

She stared stonily at him. Finally the girl whispered, “Kill me, please. You’ve found out what you want to know.”

Vulpes backed off, returning to the security panel of monitors and running his fingers along the keys. “The answer is, the atomic bomb. Such a waste. The Legionaries are wisely taught that the rain of fire was simply Mars, cleansing the earth. But it was actually man...polluting it. I have a particular interest in science, Aella. It is one that I only indulge to serve my Legion. However, the power of the warheads…..”

He looked over his shoulder at her. “It must have felt and looked so cleansing. To wipe away everything so putrid and sickening. Destruction and waste are very….pleasing.” He typed something into the keypad and the large monitor switched to a nearly-black image, a still camera looking down on an underground hangar nearby. They both made out the large white and silver, bullet-like tower sitting upright. 

“Meant to defend the air base, so it says on the logs,” he commented. “However, the good part of growing up within the confines of a Followers camp is that they taught us science. I can re-route the coordinates.” 

He smirked, and she began screaming. The girl kicked and pounded her feet against the concrete and Vulpes turned away, arming the warhead and then scooping the small, pale, stealth-clad redhead and cutting the rope that bound her wrists. Now he, unbelievably more powerful than she, crushed her wrists. She stopped screaming when he whispered, “I had to kill my friend’s mother. Now I have truly no one but the Legion, and the Almight Caesar. So who else should I try to impress?”

He brought one of her wrists forward, ignoring her struggles, and slammed her palm down on the detonate button. The girl screeched and wailed as the camera shook; the warhead was doused in light as the hangar walls parted back to let it move, and Vulpes let her go to take control of the panel again. The girl fell on her butt on the floor, but just as she scrambled up to attack him the monitor flicked screens again. This time, peaceful Fort Carson was visible in the distance.

And toward it, a small trail of smoke was visible.


	28. Chapter 28

The girl grew frantic and it was actually a struggle, even with the extra adrenaline from seeing his plans come to fruition, for Vulpes to hold her down. She was convulsing, not trying to get anywhere in particular but away, but he jerked her upright, snarling for her to watch the screen. When she refused and kicked his shin, he growled in a rather deranged voice, “It’s too late! You’re too late!”

She broke free and headed toward the balcony door. The girl must have known exactly where they were, because the door was hidden by a bookshelf which she hurriedly knocked over as she clawed the door. For a moment Vulpes was worried, but as he walked after her he smiled a rather sick smile. They were in a hidden pre-War missile base. They were in a round tower called a silo, and were at least seventy feet above ground. Not only did she have nowhere to go but off a rail, but the view here would be incredible. 

The door led out to a small rusted frame to stand on, not more than three feet square, but it was enough for her to trip and grab the railing, which groaned even under her tiny weight, silhouetted in black in the suit that Vulpes had forced her to wear. He slowed his walk, almost waltzing now as he approached from behind. Vulpes didn’t join her on the balcony but leered in the doorway, a self-satisfied look etched across his pale face as she sobbed. 

The sky was lit up by the moon and stars, perhaps the only thing in this wasteland that still resembled their pre-War selves. And Vulpes had spoken true. It was too late. The arc of smoke traveled across the night sky and continued far, toward an almost indiscernible cluster of lights in the far distance. It began to drop, the shrieks of the redhead fading to almost-silent heaving sobs, but now Vulpes grabbed her from behind, hugging her close and speaking into her ear. 

“The technology you so love, the power of Pre-War technology, is going to collapse your empire into nothingness. Majestic, isn’t it?” 

When she tried to turn her face away he grabbed her chin and wrenched it back toward the falling warhead. The girl’s eyes squeezed shut, but even she had to peek as the tiny trail went out. Flickered. Went out again and disappeared. For one agonizingly long moment it seemed that nothing would happen and the still noises of the plains at night were going to stay uninterrupted. But then an intense white haze shot up, so bright it blocked out everything else and nothing but a great white hole remained. It was too late to realize then, that neither had shielded their eyes in time. As the pair squinted and blinked in pain from the searing light, the sky once again faded to dark and a rumbling arose. Just as Vulpes grabbed the door and wrapped one arm firmly around her waist, the shockwave hit and stunned them both. They were far from the blast, but both were still shaken for several seconds before the high-pitched sound of Vulpes’s shrieks of laughter were overtaken by the loud, teeth-rattling boom of the explosion. 

_________

Callum and his fellow Centurions were leading troops toward this old military base, where Caesar was certain that some secret society lurked. None of the Centurions questioned the dictator, who had decided to turn the mountain ski lodge into a temporary Fort as he had what he called an ‘atomic sized headache.’ It was Callum alone who knew where they were going, and he carried mixed feelings about seeing the base again. Luckily for him, his shiny new Centurion helmet hid the brooding and skeptical look on his face. It was night and they were mere hours from Cheyenne mountain, cutting through the massive eroded fields and once-crops that were now full of burnt-out crispy husks of corn littering the ground. 

Silus was at Callum’s side, also quiet, and dressed in full decanus armor. There was a scout walking ahead, even though the city was in sight ahead of them, a small mass of twinkling lights. The scout was looking uncertainly around for predators, but Callum knew that the Brotherhood . He said nothing, however, but just as the scout’s mouth formed the first syllable a white flash blinded the group of red, sending those without glasses, like Callum, hunched over in pain and shock, or else tripping backwards from confusion. The Decanii, who wore goggles, were aware enough to catch or support their comrades, or do as Silus did and withdraw their guns rather pointlessly. Just as the flash faded and the men began to murmur amongst themselves, the great ball of fire rose in the sky and a shockwave pushed them back again. 

The Legionaries were far closer to town than Vulpes and Aella had been from their silo perch, and now many were blown backwards, and others wisely hit the ground as a wave of debris and dust flew toward them in a wind more violent than the tornadoes. It was cool air, and made a hissing sound as it passed, but even those who were mostly blinded could see the mushroom cloud rise up in a hellish orange glow. Now that they understood what was happening many began to scramble to their feet. Silus and Callum rose together, jaws dropped, and the brunette clapped his ears to the sides of his head just as the crackling boom of the explosion sounded. 

The wind roared past the group for several more seconds, but then died down, and the fire was gone. Trails of smoke remained in the sky. Silus hesitantly pulled back his hood and goggles and pushed down his facemask. The air was hotter now, and the lights that had once been their reference point were now completely gone. As the Legion group picked themselves up and most hesitantly re-holstered their weapons, Callum remarked to his Decanus, “Looks like we won’t need to invade anything now.”


	29. Chapter 29

Months later, the Followers of the Apocalypse had set up a small emergency food shelter for victims of Nevada’s latest flash flood. Homes were washed away in the strangely severe weather, and some rumors of Hoover Dam breaking had reached the settlement. But without any contact from Legion or NCR there was no way to know for certain. The line of people waiting for food was almost as long as the line of people waiting for medical care, and the group worked under the stressful conditions without complaint.

In line stood a tall, thin girl whose face was mostly hidden by a duster hat, and the chest flaps of her leather, ankle-length cowboy duster were turned upwards to hide her face. She was one of the few who paid, handing over shiny golden Legion coins to the Followers, who stared at her warily when she took the can of beans. 

“Do you need any medical aid?” one volunteer asked, and she curtly shook her head no, but then both turned when a figure approached, running toward the group. It looked like the standard lone wastelander, but the girl in the cowboy hat signaled that she would investigate. Now she turned, pushing the long duster aside to show off the sawed-off shotgun on her hip. With her long legs she quickly met the stranger, who wore a strange assortment of Wasteland clothes and looked thin and hungry.

“Can you help me,” the newcomer asked between gasps. “I’m on the run from a bunch of raiders. I lost them miles ago. But I need food and shelter.”

The other female, from behind her closed-off duster, stated lamely, “This is emergency shelter for storm victims. Not troublemakers. You look like a troublemaker.”

“I….” the girl’s hood fell away and revealed a beautifully stunning red head of hair, and underneath it a flawless porcelain face. She was breathtaking despite the dirt and grime all over her. She flitted her gaze toward the crowd behind the girl in the cowboy hat. 

“Your good looks won’t get you anything here,” the cowgirl warned, unholstering the shotgun. She cocked it rather lazily against her shoulder. Now her chin tilted back to reveal a long blond braid, and shrewd, twinkling green eyes. “Do you have any caps?”

“I have nothing,” the redhead cried, sounding pathetic. “I have nothing. I can...I can offer tech skills…”

Several of the Followers were beginning to look over, almost embarrassedly. The blond sneered. “What good exactly do you think technology is going to do here?”

“Please.” The redhead said, her shoulders slumping. “Please just...help me.” 

Now the blond was silent, her eyes scanning the sunset across the Mojave, the wind ruffling her braid and the frayed edges of her overcoat. She was quite young, and something in the way she stood with the gun in her hand was familiar to the redhead, though she couldn’t place why. 

The cowgirl spoke. “This is a shelter for refugees.” She repeated. “People who have had their homes ripped away from them. People who have struggled. Not only do you show up in stolen clothes,” the redhead looked down at her outfit--she had indeed taken the clothing from a body near the interstate-- “But you also bring a group of Raiders behind you. You have no money and you expect handouts.”

Now, a rather sheepish-looking curly haired Follower approached. “It’s...it’s quite all right…”

“No it isn’t,” the blond said sternly. She held out something and the redhead actually drew back, but paused when she saw that the blond girl was holding a can of beans in her gloved hand. “Take it,” the other girl insisted. “I just paid for your dinner. You’re welcome. Now get the hell out of here.” 

“What am I...supposed to do with this?” the redhead said in a panicked voice. 

Now the cowgirl snorted. “It’s food. You eat it. And be happy I didn’t serve it with a round of buckshot. If you’re not gone in twenty seconds I’m going to open up that can for you, with my gun.”

As the redhead ran off after a few seconds hesitation, mumbling a thank you and heading toward the nearby mountains, one of the Follower mercenaries approached. “Hey, that was pretty good. Now maybe we won’t have to deal with whatever band of raiders and junkies she’s got after her.”

The curly haired Follower looked sad, but said nothing. To the blond, the merc asked, “You lookin’ for work?”

“No,” the girl said, fishing into her pocket for more caps. “I do need some more beans, it looks like.”

She got back in line, and the merc walked beside her. “You sure? You’d make a great guard for the Followers.”

“I’ve...I’m on my way home,” she said in a strange tone. 

“Oh yeah? Where’s home?”

“Utah.” 

The Followers merc nodded, accepting the answer, and stepped back behind the makeshift food stand as the blond paid for her dinner, the cool desert night still and quiet from any further intrusions.


End file.
